Sinn Féin may be on the slide but latest poll shows they haven’t gone away you know...
AS SINN Féin recently tore into the new Simon Harris regime over the Taoiseach’s absence from the Dáil, one minister remarked: ‘Ah, look at the Shinners, all getting old and cranky together in opposition.’
The sniping observation summarised the political tragicomedy in which Sinn Féin appears to be shying away from ‘their turn’ in government.
However, even before the slight 2% improvement in yesterday’s Business Post poll, there were questions about the extent of the little death of Sinn Féin.
Its rating at 27% of voters’ preferences is way down on its peak of 35% in May 2022.
So has the party – with its flip-flopping on issues from migration to the hate speech Bill – unravelled before the eyes of the electorate?
And without its fiery exchanges in the Dáil with former taoiseach Leo Varadkar, will the party run out of steam before the next general election, at most less than a year away?
Only last year we were being told the Sinn Féin surge was irreversible, and those of us who suggested it was overstretched and was running short of supplies and candidates were dismissed.
Instead, the only issue left in
Sauntering around like prodigal sons
the next election, we were told, was who in Sinn Féin would get the ministerial cars and who in Fianna Fáil would get the junior ministerial leftovers.
Sinn Féin figures, meanwhile, sauntered around the Dáil like ‘prodigal sons’ who believed they had inherited the farm prior to any bereavement.
We are in quite the changed world now, as the party is attacked on both its soft-left and hard-right flanks.
Now, the same experts who ‘discovered’ the ‘surge’ are talking about a slide while already party leader Mary Lou McDonald is being thanked for her long and noble service, in a similar manner to Simon Coveney a week before his ‘voluntary’ departure, while politically flirtatious eyes wink at Michelle O’Neill.
Indeed, it is already being suggested that Teflon Michelle is getting on better with the electorate in the South than Mary Lou.
The duration of Sinn Féin’s stint in Opposition has generated a similar sense of tedium among the electorate as Fine Gael’s decades in government.
But before the Government becomes too confident, it should note that Sinn Féin has a great ability to regenerate.
In that regard the party is a phoenix rather than a vulture.
Our political experts would be wise to note that the sources of the now-historic Sinn Féin surge are still strong. The sense of dislocation among the voters is accentuated by the ongoing ‘you never had it so good’ economic message from the Coalition.
One Fine Gael figure recently warned: ‘Never mind full employment, we’re fooling ourselves with that stuff.
‘Hundreds of thousands of people are on zero-hours contracts or can’t get a house. They don’t see themselves as having a stake in the country under Fine Gael, so why shouldn’t they vote Sinn Féin?’
The apparatchik added: ‘Our core voters used to be people who wanted a job, a family and a house. They tended to get the house in their 30s.
‘Now they’re still living at home with their parents.
‘They are the soft underbelly of the middle class who will put Sinn Féin into power if they switch to Sinn Féin.’
For now, the political ides continue to be utterly uncertain for Sinn Féin.
The self-confidence of the party was further punctured by a disastrously timed and executed attempt at a political attack on Justice Minister Helen McEntee.
Sinn Féin’s increasingly limpwristed performance was icily dissected by the party’s nemesis, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who in his Ard Fheis speech awarded Sinn Féin a high placing in making decisions oblivious to the needs of the people.
When it came to the recent referendum, Mr Tóibín noted that many in Sinn Féin ‘only started campaigning after the results were published’.
Yesterday’s poll showing that Sinn Féin’s approval is up 2% indicates it is way too early to be talking about a Sinn Féin slide in definitive terms.
At 27%, Sinn Féin is still the most popular party, according to the poll, while Fine Gael saw its support increase by just one point to bring it to 20%.
‘We’re fooling ourselves with that stuff’
And this unimpressive increase in popular support comes despite Fine Gael’s change of leadership and a hope among many in the party’s ranks that Simon Harris would provide it with a much-needed boost.
Meanwhile, according to the poll, Fianna Fáil is down two points to just 14%.
Labour and the Social Democrats remain unchanged at 3% and 6% respectively, while Aontú and Solidarity People Before Profit are both down one point to 4% and 2%.
But if Sinn Féin can regroup and re-invent as successfully as it has managed to do in the past, we may yet discover, that far from being on the slide, Sinn Féin hasn’t gone away you know.