Don’t be fooled by the spin of the new-look Shinners

TO MISQUOTE U2: Sinn Féin is stuck in a moment they don’t want to get out of... It is obvious to everyone else that a vacuum at Stormont in the middle of Brexit negotiations is a wrecking ball for Anglo-Irish relations, yet Sinn Féin is biding its time.

Gerry and his peace-makers idly watch deadlines drift by and cast a cold eye on the DUP and Northern secretary James Brokenshire. Michelle O’Neill is the public face but Adams is running the team in the talks to restore the power-sharing executive and the Assembly.

It is no exaggeration to say the hatred and distrust between Sinn Féin and the DUP is as fresh and toxic as it was two generations ago.

AND Sinn Féin members, like the other politicians in the Assembly, want to continue filling its saddlebags with the queen’s shilling while politics rots in the abandoned building. The single common purpose for all MLAs is to continue drawing their £49,500 (€55,500) salaries.

And if Sinn Féin is stuck in that moment in the North, it is also trapped in the Oireachtas, caught in pincer movement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Supporting the independence movement in Catalonia and describing themselves as ‘metropolitan nationalists’ is the latest Shinner wheeze to pursue the ‘progressive’ vote.

A curious phrase, presumably, to distance themselves from old-fashioned nationalists who can be ‘fascist’. Prefixing the word ‘metropolitan’ to ‘nationalist’ is like a medic putting ‘good’ before cholesterol.

The description appears in an obscure publication called A Critical Companion To Contemporary Marxism contained in a sentence ‘enacting a reiteration of metropolitan nationalist discourse…’ No, Sinn Féiners are nationalists, full stop.

I PRESUME three independent Government ministers are leading an Irish peace mission to North Korea because Jedward are not available. The twins have pantomime commitments early next year when John Halligan, Shane Ross and Finian McGrath plan to visit Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.

CIA experts say Kim Jong-un pays a lot of attention to his hair and tailoring – an area of popular culture where the three ministers cannot compete with Jedward.

And Jedward’s successful settlement negotiations in the High Court last week gave them another advantage over ministers currently drifting in the publicity doldrums. But the ministers decided to trump Jedward’s local victory with an outrageous international publicity stunt designed to grab global media coverage next January or February.

Minister Halligan hopes to play the nostalgia card and remind the North Koreans how the Workers’ Party in Ireland shamelessly cosied up to the regime.

The same shamelessness will attach itself to the three ministers’ trip next year, even if they will pay their own expenses and ignore the North Koreans’ international crimes.

I was in Malaysia last year when two young women smothered the face of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader, with VX, a nerve agent; he died minutes later. The world’s most repressive regime seizes tourists or anyone as hostages to use as political bargaining chips, a concern the three Irish ministers are prepared to overlook.

A photo opportunity with an infamous murderous dictator is no guarantee of flattering publicity for ministers bearing Riverdance DVDs and CDs. If the Pyongyang Three want to do something useful why don’t they head to Moscow, another source of money and comfort for the Workers’ Party in the 1980s and 90s.

The same Soviet spying apparatus is still working against the West and they could investigate whether or not Russian hackers played a part in Britain’s Brexit vote last year.

But that would be serious work for serious men, best left to professionals like Jedward.

THE tricolour outside the Irish embassy in Valletta was flying at half-mast on Friday as murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was laid to rest in Malta. The country’s most celebrated investigative journalist was assassinated when a powerful bomb exploded in her car near her home on October 16.

It was the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs that described Ms Caruana Galizia’s death as ‘assassination’ – and they did not send a representative to attend the private funeral. The Irish Government is anxious not to upset Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose alleged corruption was a focus of Ms Caruana Galizia’s investigative reporting.

Her fearless reporting for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ famous Panama Papers investigation will be examined to determine a motive for her death.

The Irish-born director of the Washington-based ICIJ, Gerard Ryle, called on the Maltese authorities to investigate the murder and bring the perpetrators to justice.

THE Taoiseach’s Strategic Communications Unit must have spotted the front-page potential of a statement on alleged sexual harassment in the Gate theatre.

Job announcements and meetings with the biggest of the IT bosses in Silicon Valley don’t have the same impact as a political leader speaking out against alleged perpetrators.

It was also a signal that the Gate has nowhere to hide in government and can expect full exposure of any shortcomings.