Sinn Spice Mary Lou is just another wannabe

WHEN the history of 2018 is written, these momentous days will jump out from the pages, when Mary Lou McDonald was elected President of Sinn Féin, and the Spice Girls announced their comeback. Girl power or what?

Mary Lou first. When she concluded her inaugural speech with the gauche ‘Up The Rebels, Tiocfaidh ár lá’ she sounded like she was on something. If she wasn’t, she should consider the options.

Mary Lou what were you thinking? Who are the rebels you are talking about?

And what possessed you to blurt out such an ill-considered bit of sloganeering on behalf of the Provos?

You’d have to wonder if this was the first major decision she made as the new leader.

Or did she run it past the committee?

To tell the truth I’ve never quite accepted that Mary Lou is Sinn Féin material.

She is a good parliamentarian and represents her constituency very capably.

But she’s a middle- class girl who went to a convent school and even though she has defended herself on her abandonment of Fianna Fáil, it always feels, to me, that she has to keep mouthing shibboleths to retain her position in the party.

Call me old-fashioned, but I personally don’t think that somebody who hasn’t lived in Northern Ireland has any concept of the reality of life there on a daily basis.

There is a very good reason why Sinn Féin is there, and being Northern Irish is a state of mind rather than a political identity.

We would all love to see a united Ireland and Mary Lou promised it might happen in her lifetime.

I imagine that if the day ever comes, it won’t be Mary Lou who makes the ultimate decision.

Sinn Féin may well have a number of very capable female deputies, but let’s face it, it is not a model of girl power.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Mary Lou is the Joan of Arc of Ireland. Somebody hide the matches and let’s have no more unscripted outbursts.

The other big event of recent days was the announcement that the Spice Girls were reforming – ‘Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want’, and all that.

If the whole prospect wasn’t so vile it would be tedious. Ten years ago, after one of the most cynical exploitations of girls of all ages The Spice Girls broke up and went their separate ways with big bags of money.

Their fortunes were made on the back of a marketing strategy of convincing ‘ordinary’ girls that by following the style and fashion of the Spice Girls, they would be empowered like never before. That girl power had arrived.

What I find objectionable is that one of the first things we’ve found out about the comeback tour is that Posh isn’t going to sing a note. I’d be tempted to look for some proof that any of them had sung on the previous tours, but it’s making suckers of the unfortunate young girls who think that by following the Spice Girls, what they are getting is real power over their lives.

What they are getting is a false sense of power over their own destiny.

IREMEMBER a taxi driver once telling me that ‘Ireland changed forever when woman discovered vodka.’ That’s now changed, of course, and the drink that is dominant now is gin – big tulip glasses full of gin, with cucumber, courgettes, fruits of all types.

And nothing will do but to buy a bottle of designer tonic to accompany it – at an exorbitant price.

Meanwhile the ‘ordinary’ Spice Girls will be watching one another like hawks for fear any one of them might get any exclusive perks.

And they will each have their own bodyguards.

Already I can hear it – ‘Her bodyguards are bigger than mine’.