The picture of a beaming Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill dominated the front pages of both the Financial Times and the Guardian on Wednesday morning, as the two papers hailed the great Stormont revival.
If there’s one thing that politicians like, it’s big smiling pictures of them adorning the front pages of newspapers. During the rollercoaster Fine Gael-Independent minority administration from 2016-20, I often had occasion to speak to Finian McGrath, the independent minister. Inevitably, the conversations were about some scrape or other, involving discomfort for the poor Independents. The ever-cheerful Finian would always end the conversation with: “Don’t forget to use a big photo!”
So the Shinner winners must have been delighted with the photos. The message that McDonald chose to convey, however, was remarkable: a united Ireland, she said, was now “within touching distance”.
The ascension of O’Neill to the First Minister’s office, she said, “signals now the new Ireland emerging and the conversation around a new constitutional dispensation, ending partition, Irish unity – all of the opportunity that presents is in many ways embodied in this moment.”
We can interpret McDonald’s comments as either an attempt to goad unionists at a point of maximum sensitivity, or a bid to reassure her own base after a flaky opinion poll result last weekend and a few shaky months
“As a matter of fact, in historic terms, it’s within touching distance,” she said. “And I think that’s a very exciting thing.”
This was not an off-the-cuff remark, made in the excitement of the moment. That is rarely how these things work. So we can interpret McDonald’s comments as either an attempt to goad unionists at a point of maximum sensitivity, or a bid to reassure her own base after a flaky opinion poll result last weekend and a few shaky months. Or it could be both, I suppose. Either way, it is noteworthy.
As she must have anticipated – and despite the considerable polling evidence to the contrary – McDonald’s united Ireland remarks ignited a barrage of criticism from unionists, many of whom figured out that McDonald was deliberately provoking them but couldn’t help themselves anyway. A more interesting question, though, is: why would she do this?
The incoming Stormont administration will have enough problems without its joint leaders sniping at one another about a united Ireland. Their in-tray is impossibly stuffed with competing demands for attention and, most of all, money. Sure, they will have the £3 billion that Rishi Sunak and Chris Heaton-Harris have been dangling as a bribe for months now. But I promise you it will not be remotely enough to meet all the demands and expectations piling up.
Pretty soon the Stormont ministers will be wondering where the hell all the money went and how they are going to meet the demands at their door, all amplified by vocal interest groups and a willing media. Ah, says anyone who has ever served: welcome to government, folks. A briefing paper drawn up for Heaton-Harris last year on the North’s public finances suggested various means of filling the budgetary black hole – water charges, increases in university fees, prescription costs, civil service cuts. The £3 billion bung will stave off that unpleasant reality for a while. But not forever. The fiscal future of the North, just like it is for the rest of the UK, looks pretty grim.
[ Sinn Féin's libel actions attract mounting criticism inn wake of Belfast ruling ]
There has always been a suspicion among unionists, which extends to some quarters in Dublin, that Sinn Féin has never really wanted Northern Ireland to work. Why would they want a political entity, to which they were so opposed that they were willing to support the killing of thousands of people in a violent campaign against it, to be successful? It’s a reasonable question, but I’m not sure I buy it. Sinn Féin operated the powersharing administration for long enough. And the focus of its political efforts, for a long time now, has been the Republic. I’m not sure they get any points from southern voters for working the government of Northern Ireland, but they definitely don’t get any credit for not working it.
There’s always a risk of overinterpreting individual poll results but the general trend for the party in recent months has not been encouraging, and it is true that votes easily won are often easily lost
Which brings us to the second possibility about McDonald’s remarks: that they are aimed at reassuring her own base. A poll in last weekend’s Business Post trumpeted a slump in Sinn Féin support to 25 per cent, the same level it received at the last election – “Four years of gains wiped out,” as the paper put it.
There’s always a risk of overinterpreting individual poll results but the general trend for the party in recent months has not been encouraging, and it is true that votes easily won are often easily lost. There is a real sense that the party has been on the back foot of late – on law and order, on immigration, even on housing, where ministers have been reminding McDonald of her desire to see house prices fall (a sensible desire, but a politically combustible one).
[ Would a drop in house prices be a good thing? ]
This week, the party has been defending its trip to the White House for St Patrick’s Day in the face of fierce criticism from its allies in the pro-Palestinian camp, forcing Sinn Féin TDs to make the rather implausible claim that they will spend their time in the US criticising Israel and demanding Joe Biden stand up for the rights of the Palestinians. I imagine their audiences will be somewhat nonplussed if they do.
The fact is that McDonald has two bases: one mainly in the North, and one in the Republic, where all those new voters are. Just like she has two messages – that Sinn Féin will be a massive change in the government of the South, but also that it would not change the things that voters like; that the Republic is a basket-case, misruled for 100 years, but that a Sinn Féin government would not change its economic model; that things under Sinn Féin will be simultaneously different, and the same; that we will get both change and continuity.
It is not impossible to sell this message. But it is tricky. And that is beginning to show.
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