Attacking Sinn Féin on Brexit is corrupt
THERE are so many reasons to attack Sinn Féin. But abstentionism is not one of them. The party’s sick, undemocratic and entirely indefensible support for the 30-year-plus campaign of mass murder by the IRA in Ireland, Great Britain and beyond should be enough to keep Sinn Féin away from the levers of power for as long as they maintain it.
Sinn Féin’s stated admiration for the most appalling violence and their traditional cult-like characteristics with regard to leadership are a source of scandal.
There is also that little matter of a secret ‘steering’ committee – (in the old days we just called those gangsters the IRA Army Council, although they were nothing more than a band of conspirators and mayhem makers) – throwing ominous shadows over the entire party.
The party’s pretence for radical chic and its exploitation of brainless, arty dogsbodies they regard as nothing more than useful idiots are choreographed falsehoods.
Sinn Féin is one big dangerous lie hiding in full view.
It backed austerity in Northern Ireland while criticising cutbacks in the South.
The party recently implored the Government to spend an additional €1.4bn in the October budget. This is a reckless response to the Government’s woeful record on housing and health and would mean borrowing money and increasing debt in a climate of great economic uncertainty.
THEIR taxation policies would crucify the private sector and spook the international companies that supply so many jobs in this country.
So, attack them for all that but don’t attack Sinn Féin for abstentionism, because it lacks both integrity and credibility.
Coming from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil it is nothing more than an act of studied deflection – an attempt to divert attention from the demonstrable failings of mainstream politics in Ireland and beyond.
Floundering in the disaster of pre-Brexit nonsense, Micheál Martin and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar have both landed on the notion that bashing Sinn Féin for refusing to allow their seven MPs take their seats in Westminster will bring political dividends. They are in for some shock. Because it won’t.
This game of charades has nothing whatsoever to do with abstentionism and everything to do with the decay at the heart of mainstream politics that has given us Brexit, Donald Trump and the resurgence of nationalism, negative populism, fear, alienation and xenophobia throughout Europe.
The crisis facing Ireland, Britain, the US and the rest of the free world results from concerns about globalisation, migration and the influx of refugees, dysfunctional bureaucracies and basic inequalities and unfairness in individual states. Globalisation is viewed with suspicion by the middle classes who are drowning in a debt crisis while their kids are destined to become the first generation in a hundred years to have less in their pockets than the previous one.
IN AMERICA, a Pew Research Centre study shows how there are more lower-income, fewer middleclass and significantly more upper-income earners than in Europe. Which helps explains why so many people are angry about everything and Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. For the past 30 years, as globalisation intensified, the super-rich have increased their share of income to an eye-watering extent – from 2008 the world’s richest 1% have managed to grow their wealth from 42.5% to over 50%, according to Credit Suisse.
Meanwhile, the United Nations reports that migration worldwide continues to surge, reaching 258 million last year, up from 173 million in 2000.
All this is accompanied by upheavals in the Middle East and elsewhere, characterised in many instances by Islamist terrorism.
On top of this, there are 26 million refugees and asylum seekers, over three million of whom are in Turkey. And we wonder why Turkey has re-elected hardman Recep Tayyip Erdogan for as long as he wants.
In Britain and Ireland mainstream politicians have presided over rampant abuse and illegalities by their friends in the financial institutions and the downstream suffering of ordinary people; they were in charge in both countries when children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused in State-run or supported institutions; they had control when contaminated blood was knowingly given out to people who then became infected with AIDS and hepatitis, many of them losing their lives as a direct result.
In Ireland the lack of social housing is particularly unspeakable. All of this, courtesy of politicians clutching moderate, centrist banners.
DIVERSIONARY ‘abstentionist’ mudslinging in the direction of Sinn Féin won’t work because everybody knows the problems we face are not of their making. They’re not the architects of globalisation and its defects; they can’t be blamed for bankers destroying the economy, or outrageous inequalities, or State-sponsored abuses in health and housing or a broken ill-tempered bureaucracy that saps public confidence.
Abstentionism has nothing to do with all that. Attacking Sinn Féin on the wrong thing is an act of selfharm. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin need to reset.