As rivals round on her, McDonald has only herself to blame for not challenging Adams

GERRY ADAMS is neither gone nor forgotten – but we are nearing the end of the bearded one’s 34-year reign. So watch the other parties ramp up their targeting of the one most likely to succeed him.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald heads a very small list of people, with the rest deemed to be several streets behind her in the succession stakes.

You cannot entirely rule out Donegal TD and finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, as an Ulster-based Irish speaker who does his politics in the Republic.

Other make-weight names for the succession list also occur. But unless we see white blackbirds overflying Leinster House, Mary Lou McDonald will soon be Uachtaráin Shinn Féin.

Limerick’s redoubtable Willie O’Dea of Fianna Fáil led the charge some weeks ago when he argued that Sinn Féin post-Adams might not be able to shrug off its violent past so readily. He argued that none of the would-be successor, post-war generation of Sinn Féin kingpins ever challenged Gerry “never-in-the-IRA” Adams on matters such as murder, sex abuse, and other contentious issues.

The Limerick city TD is fully signed up to Micheál Martin’s view that middleclass voters will desert Fianna Fáil in their droves if they are seen as dallying with Sinn Féin on coalition before the next election, which is likely to happen in the first half of next year.

Others, across different parties, have echoed Mr O’Dea’s key point of debate. It is that Sinn Féin has brought in people of merit with a growing track record, who by age at least pre-date the worst of the North’s Troubles.

But none of them has ever challenged Mr Adams’s dictat on cases like the sexual abuse of Máiria Cahill; the kidnap, murder and disappearance of widowed mother-of-10 Jean McConville; and the murder, torture and calumniation of Tom Oliver.

Mary Lou McDonald comes from a different generation and background. Yet she stays with ‘Gerry speak’, in dealing with the Sinn Féin/ IRA issues yet to be resolved.

Mr Adams told us in Gormanstown, Co Meath, earlier this month that he will continue his long goodbye at the party’s Árd Fheis at the RDS in Dublin on November 17 and 18. He will by then have entered his 70th year, having marked his 69th birthday on October 6.

For a year now, it has been about when and how Mr Adams, a most divisive political figure, will exit the political stage.

Fine Gael and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar have clearly chosen to pump up the volume in what is emerging as a political game of Punch and Judy. On Tuesday, the Taoiseach compared Ms McDonald with French Front National leader Marine Le Pen, and during a Dáil row on Wednesday he effectively accused Ms McDonald of reading from a script prepared elsewhere.

Let’s be fair to the Sinn Féin deputy leader. Most leading politicians work from a script prepared by others, though they might not all be written in Belfast.

Equally, it is valid to ask: once Mr Adams is gone what will change in the party bar cosmetics? Ms McDonald is one of the Dáil’s best performers. But, on evidence so far, we can assume business as usual for the party in a post-Adams world.

She stays with ‘Gerry-speak’ in dealing with the SF/IRA dark past of legacy issues yet to be answered.

MR Varadkar and Fine Gael are hoping they can get two-for-the-price-of-one in going in hard against Sinn Féin and a putative new leader in Ms McDonald.

Firstly, they want to reassure the party heartland and people in middle Ireland that they remain true to continuity and law and order.

For vast swathes of middle-class voters, Sinn Féin can window-dress all they like. The memory of the 1996 IRA murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare, and other incidents, remain alive. Sinn Féin still has a long and shriving political road to walk.

It is axiomatic for Mr Varadkar to put as much ground between them and Fine Gael as possible. In so doing, they leave Fianna Fáil continuing their struggle to do the same.

Fine Gael has a certain high-ground advantage here. But we also know the power of post-election Dáil arithmetic.