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Hard to escape the conclusion that its plan is simply to try harder with the same strategies and messages as before
Hard to escape the conclusion that its plan is simply to try harder with the same strategies and messages as beforeSinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald TD speaks to the media surrounded by her party members ahead of their party ‘Think In’, in the Grand Hotel, Malahide.
Photo: Sam Boal/CollinsMalahide ladies of a certain age, gathering at the hotel for morning teas and coffees, seemed unperturbed by the invasion. In truth, the party has a lot of thinking to do as it seeks to prepare – for third time under McDonald’s leadership – to unseatOpinion: Germany’s past crashes into the presentJust as with the earlier Labour and Fianna Fáil think-ins, the cost of living has been front and centre with.
This is comfortable territory, allowing it to reprise the left-populist lines that have defined its economic policies for a decade. The promise by McDonald and her finance spokesman, Pearse Doherty, of a big reduction in USC has been a staple of the party’s recent alternative budgets – which have been solidly redistributive, promising to tax wealthier people and corporations and transfer the resources to those less well-off.
But will it prove any more successful than in the past? In the wake of revelations about the chaos in the party on immigration policy before the last election, contained in a book by former adviser Siobhán Fenton published this week, McDonald also faced questions on the issue – and will face strategic choices in the future.
One could boil down Sinn Féin’s stance on immigration before the last general election – following the shellacking in the local and European elections in June of 2024 – to promising not to put asylum seekers anywhere near its voters. Something more substantive will be required, one imagines, in the future.
The party has largely supported the shift to the right on migration that the Government has effected since the last election, though McDonald stopped short of agreeing with the Government’s intention of reducing net inward migration. But she’s headed in that direction. As Fenton’s book makes clear, immigration is an extraordinarily difficult issue for the party, cleaving a division its progressive and nationalist wings.
There is no easy answer for it, and it will not go away. Mary Lou McDonald TD speaking to her advisors ahead of their party ‘Think In’, in the Grand Hotel, Malahide. Photo: Sam Boal/Collins Photos Irish unity remains the party’s perpetual lodestar, and also serves as a useful stick with which to beat the Taoiseach, whom the party regard as insufficiently impatient on the subject.
But the push for unity is not something that moves the political dial in the south, where a large majority is vaguely in favour but as a political priority, it is a concern of somewhere between 1-2 per cent, polls suggest. As the party girds itself for yet another parliamentary term in opposition, it is hard to escape the conclusion that its plan is simply to try harder with the same strategies and messages as before.
This may appeal to the traditional republican psyche as part of a long struggle, after which their day will come. In reality, to be successful, it will likely take something external to change the current political context. Given the uncertain state of the world and its economy, that is eminently possible. But it is at heart, a strategy built on the hope that something will turn up.
Summer drought shows horticulture needs to consider irrigation systems, Heydon says‘Everything was bled out’: Publican says he can’t pay cleaner after losing nearly €200,000Iceland summons US ambassador after Trump posts map showing island under American flagGAA president says equal funding for intercounty teams a concern of integration processSinn Féin immigration stance ‘very clear’, McDonald insists, as Coalition seeks to tighten rules Our politics team's behind-the-scenes take on events of the day. Sent Monday to Friday when the Dáil is in session
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