SF transfers will go to SF candidates. So what will be left for Soc Dems?

CATHERINE MURPHY and Róisín Shortall have made careers out of disagreeing with party colleagues, splitting and pursuing contrarianism. I say that with admiration. For, as the greatest politician of them all, Franklin Roosevelt, once said: ‘I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.’

Despite the difficulties that sticking by their principles have caused them, they have become two of the most enduring left-wing politicians of the last three decades. Now they appear to have found peace in the Social Democrats, where they lead a younger, promising group of politicians. Yet, just as the Social Democrats appear on the cusp of triumph, they are being surpassed by Sinn Féin

If a genuine, heavyweight ideological divide is finally emerging in Irish politics, it is because one behemoth of a party, Sinn Féin, is threatening to dominate the Left, so much so that the old centrist parties are uniting to oppose them. The Social Democrats’ co-leaders, Ms Murphy and Ms Shortall, may have been overshadowed by the great centrist movements in the past but it didn’t stop them existing, or splitting.

The old joke goes: the first item on the agenda of a Communist meeting is the split. But like all jokes there is a central truth. Communism, socialism, whatever you choose to call it, is an ideology founded in struggle. This trait of leftism has sustained Ms Murphy and Ms Shortall.

Catherine Murphy joined the old Workers’ Party in 1983. From 1977 to 1982, the year before Ms Murphy joined, the party was called ‘Sinn Féin – the Workers’ Party’. Up to 1977, it was called Official Sinn Féin. Keep up, now. In 1970, Official Sinn Féin had split from Provisional Sinn Féin and, yes, they were aligned with the Provisional IRA.

SO MS Murphy joined an organisation where turmoil and leftist debate were the raison d’être. The splitting wasn’t finished. The Workers’ Party split again in 1992 and Ms Murphy followed Proinsias de Rossa to form Democratic Left. She stood unsuccessfully for Democratic Left in the 1992 and 1997 elections but they were getting a bit bourgeois and when they merged with Labour she left. She joined Labour eventually but resigned again in 2003 citing ‘destructive internal intrigues’, which one would have thought she was accustomed to by now.

Finally, she was elected to the Dáil in 2011 and has remained there since. In 2015 she formed the Social Democrats with Ms Shortall. Ms Shortall, on the face of it, had a more orthodox path in leftist politics until she entered government. Ms Shortall then, spectacularly fell out with her coalition partners and her party.

She is the daughter of a Civil War veteran and a councillor who represented Fianna Fáil, which the party’s founding father Seán Lemass called the true party of labour. She joined the Labour Party in 1988 and was elected to the Dáil in 1992. In 2022, she overtook Mary Harney as the longest-serving woman TD in history. She opposed the Labour merger with Democratic Left in 2002 and was seen as a vocal opponent of Ruairí Quinn.

She made ministerial office in 2011, when her party entered coalition with Fine Gael. There Ms Shortall found herself junior minister for primary care under health minister James Reilly. These were the crash years and Reilly was to have a turbulent relationship with Ms Shortall. In a political rarity she resigned from government on a point of principle. In a political shock she resigned from Labour.

When the Social Democrats were formed in 2015 by three Independent TDs, Shortall, Murphy and Stephen Donnelly, it did not seem a match made in heaven and so it proved. Mr Donnelly joined Fianna Fáil in 2017.

Those in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael involved in government formation claim they offered Ms Shortall a ministerial position to join a coalition and similarly it was claimed that she was offered a position after the 2016 election. It is never quite clear how solid such offers are in the white heat of government formation (in the past we were assured the Healy-Rae brothers were to become ministers).

Nevertheless, a barb regularly thrown across the Dáil chamber is that the Social Democrats have been reluctant to take the responsibility of entering government, to bring their opposition theories to fruition.

Yet, the two veteran politicians appear to have finally found political happiness. Surely, Ms Shortall has unfinished business and Ms Murphy would want to complete her career of political activism. The four younger TDs, Holly Cairns, Cian O’Callaghan, Gary Gannon and Jennifer Whitmore want to advance.

THREE major impediments to the Social Democrats forming part of a great coalition of the Left are foremost. The first, and most obvious, is that a coalition of the Left is a contradiction. Leftist politics is founded on an ideology of conflict. Early in the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, it says: ‘Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.’

In practice there is never agreement among the Left about how best to serve the proletariat. An obsession with ideology leads to a comical inability to agree. Centrists can compromise and form coalitions, even with parties of the Left. Ms Shortall, Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett and Mary Lou McDonald coalescing seems impossible.

The second is founded in those old Socialist struggles. Napoleon Bonaparte once said a person’s world view is formed when they are 24, and it’s unlikely to change.

Ms Murphy joined the Workers’ Party, only recently rebranded from Official Sinn Féin, when she was 19. The conflict between Official and Provisional Sinn Féin will never end and a lifetime opposing the Provos is hard to turn.

Similarly, Ms Shortall has shared the Dublin West constituency with Sinn Féin’s convicted terrorist Dessie Ellis for many years. Again, it would be a difficult pill to swallow, serving under a Sinn Féin taoiseach.

Thirdly, a leftist coalition requires a variety of leftist parties and leftist groups being elected.

However, the Social Democrats face the same existential threat as Labour, the Green Party and other Left groupings, as they were significantly aided by Sinn Féin transfers. Sinn Féin had a pitiful number of candidates in the field. That circumstance will not be repeated.

Sinn Féin’s anticipated electoral advance will not damage Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as much as their putative fellow leftist comrades. The Sinn Féin cyclone will suck all leftist parties into its vortex. The potential macro damage can be seen in the micro.

ALL parties hold hope of rescue in next year’s constituency redraw, which promises extra seats, but the swings and roundabouts rule will apply here. Nevertheless, Dublin is a big problem. Cian O’Callaghan is under enough pressure in Dublin Bay North, without the suspicion that his heartland of Howth and Sutton may be moved into a newly reconstituted Dublin Fingal. Besides, Sinn Féin’s Denise Mitchell won a massive vote here in 2020 and a five-seater will see her bring in at least one running mate. Gary Gannon is up against Mary Lou MacDonald in Dublin Central, where she is almost certain to bring in a running mate. Mr Gannon is in grave difficulty. Even the co-leaders face challenges. Ms Murphy will face a formidable Réada Cronin and a running mate in Kildare North. And Ms Shortall’s nemesis, Dessie Ellis, won an extraordinary 44% in a three-seat constituency. If you’ve next to no seats, you can’t influence a potential centrist coalition.

Just when it seemed the struggle was at an end, after all the years of facing powerful foes and often smiting them, old ghosts have been resurrected.

Sinn Féin are no longer a spectral threat but a real and present one to the Social Democrats.