Davy introduces Sinn Féin to UK’s posh plutocrats

Some years ago, a very left-wing politician, a household name, stopped me in the corridors of Leinster House and asked me to introduce him to a stockbroker. He had a hidden nest egg and was wondering what he should do “with a few bob”. He was paranoid about secrecy because his public utterances conflicted with his healthy personal finances.

I was delighted that my radical friend had seen the merits of the free market and happily introduced him to a broker who was tickled pink with his new hard-left client. My fellow politician made me take a vow of eternal silence. I am still puzzled about the source of his wealth, but I will take his identity to the grave.

A few weeks later, when I asked him how his meeting had gone, he replied tersely that he was “sorted”.

I wondered aloud how he had escaped being recognised when he entered the stockbroker’s office? He replied — with black humour — that he had resurrected the balaclava that had been languishing in his bottom drawer for a decade.

Today, Sinn Féin — no longer a leftwing party — is similarly making the big jump to the dark side. The party accepts that it needs to sup with the devil. As power beckons, unlikely love stories blossom.

Pearse Doherty, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman, doesn’t do balaclavas, never did. He is arguably the most plausible, amiable Shinner in the Dáil. Like Mary Lou McDonald, he has a sense of humour. He is financially fluent and impressively numerate. He invariably wears a collar and tie. Had he not been a politician, he would have made a splendid stockbroker and cut a fine figure in a pinstripe suit.

Pearse has been palling up with Davy Stockbrokers, the dominant force in Ireland’s stock exchange. Not long ago, neither Davy nor Pearse would have been seen dead in each other’s company. Today, they are courting.

So keen is Davy to please Pearse that it has written to its clients giving him and his crew a pretty clean bill of health. According to Davy, Sinn Féin are no longer untouchable pariahs. Quite decent blokes, really — they know how to hold a knife and fork. Not a threat to financial stability. Some of their chaps even understand the market.

Pearse and Davy hit it off so well that, 10 days ago, Davy hosted a briefing and buffet lunch for global investors in Irish assets, especially for them to meet Pearse. Davy wanted to introduce its new best friend.

Fifty curious fund managers rocked up to a posh London City hotel to hear Pearse make soothing noises about how Sinn Féin in government would not upset the Irish economy. Although he was speaking to that rare breed of creatures who probably still support the dying Tory regime, Pearse is reported to have given them comfort — that behind all the loud rhetoric, Sinn Féin is no bogey man.

Presumably, Sinn Féin’s overworked spinning machine did not flood social media with the contents of this hushhush meeting. They might have provoked hostility explaining how the habitually angry Pearse cosied up to an uber-capitalist, ultra-conservative UK audience of bankers and fat cats. His surprising words — that “governments should not act prematurely” — on a referendum for a United Ireland would have been heresy in the republican fortress of west Belfast.

His pledge to nourish the US multinationals in Ireland with no more corporate tax increases would have puzzled the residents of the party’s stronghold of discontent in Dublin’s disadvantaged Darndale.

Sinn Féin now even approves, in principle, of the Paschal DonohoeMichael McGrath decision to invest part of our windfall corporate taxes in a sovereign wealth fund, rather than in immediate social welfare or other populist demands for the less well-off.

Stability and fiscal prudence were declared priorities. They would probably still tinker around with higher taxes for the very rich, but the promised wealth tax was heading for the graveyard, destined for a “review”.

Pearse’s promises will have been music to his audience’s ears — if they believed him. But fund managers, merchant bankers and other financial gurus are by nature suspicious of political blandishments. They would have needed independent endorsements of his good faith. They would not have liked the baggage attached to Pearse’s party, especially the human carnage that his predecessors in the republican movement had inflicted on the citizens of London.

The Dublin stockbrokers provided the green light that Pearse needed.

After the meeting, Davy followed up with a clever report to its foreign institutional clients, drawing a favourable analogy between Sinn Féin’s position today and the experience of a British political party.

Could Pearse Doherty be Ireland’s Tony Blair? Might he be the man to transform a republican socialist party into a free-market movement with a human face?

“Sinn Féin’s economic approach,” declared Davy helpfully, “is more New Labour than Corbyn Labour.”

Foreign investors must have salivated. New Labour is personified by Tony Blair — the man who, hiding behind a Labour banner, loosened the party’s links with the UK trade unions, was pro-business, pro-enterprise and led Britain through the strongest surge of economic growth in recorded history.

During Blair’s 10-year premiership, the UK’s stock market rose by 47pc. Could Pearse be Ireland’s Tony Blair? Might he be the man to transform a nominally republican socialist party into a free-market movement with a human face? The mind boggles.

Davy was gilding the lily. None of the global investors had asked Pearse about who called the shots in Sinn Féin these days, and why he had attended the funeral of IRA “enforcer” Bobby Storey, breaking Covid rules and bringing west Belfast to a standstill during this parliamentary term.

Pearse had not travelled to London to explain his party’s murky past. He wanted to reassure Davy’s guests that their money would be safe if he becomes finance minister. The invitees were handpicked because they are important holders of Irish government assets, bonds, stocks and bank shares. They could rock the Shinners’ boat.

Pearse’s worst fear is that, as the election approaches, the prospect of a Sinn Féin government will spook overseas investors. They have bet the bank on finance ministers Paschal Donohoe and Michael McGrath, two individuals who the markets trust.

If foreign believers in the Irish story suddenly see Sinn Féin, a party that pays lip service to socialism, as a threat to their predecessors’ good work, they will sell their Irish holdings. Pearse will face headlines during the election campaign about how the rock-solid stakeholders are dumping Irish assets in fear of a Sinn Féin victory. Voters in middle-class Ireland could take fright.

If the Shinners are “Corbyn

Labour”, foreign investors will stampede out the door. But if they are really “New Labour”, the investors will hang in there.

Lefties are not the only people who find it expedient to abandon old habits. Davy, traditionally a Fine Gael firm, has broken cover. If Pearse comes to high office, it can now expect a warm welcome at the Shinners’ table. It might even be recruited to write the odd report.

Party leader Mary Lou does other stuff. As the party’s mating dance with plutocrats goes on, she has in recent years been attending gala dinners and breakfasts at business lobbyist Ibec.

Both sides are hedging their bets, in case the day dawns when Pearse delivers a Sinn Féin budget.