Skip to main content

Sinn Failed

Tiocfaidh ár thaw. Sinn Fein have gone from having 159 local councillors elected in the 2014 local elections to 81 in the last weekend's election. What has happened? Are Sinn Fein a one-trick pony, only good at blowing the whistle when the government steps out of line? Are they a party which the electorate would trust to run the country? These are the questions being repeated ad nauseum by commentators trying to make sense of the party's seemingly calamitous defeat. I even heard one presenter suggest that Mary Lou, only wearing the Sinn Fein captain's jersey a wet week, should step down. Really I think people are missing the point here.



Sinn Fein entered the 2014 local elections on a simple mandate: anti-austerity and, principally, anti-water charges. They were, for all intents and purposes, running on a single-issue ticket. At a time when it seemed like there were no benefits left to cut or taxes left to increase by the Fine Gael-Labour coalition, people voted with their wallets.

But voting can be based on priorities. 2014, economically, seems like a long time ago. In 2014 unemployment was nearly at 12% and a whole generation were flooding out of Ireland in search of work, telling themselves that they would probably be saying farewell to their families for a decade.

Today is different. Unemployment is at a 10-year low and the economy is bouyant. Pretty much everyone who wants a job can have one.

Today the priorities of the electorate lie elsewhere - people are concerned about housing, about the destruction of the planet by climate change and about Brexit. Hence their decision to shift towards the Green party. As I have argued before, I think Attenborough and Thunberg have indirectly been more effective campaigners for the Green Party than its leader Eamonn Ryan.

I don't think it's that Sinn Fein dramatically failed to connect with people or made any calamitous slip-ups since the last election, it's merely that people are concerned about different issues today. In 2014 they channelled the zeitgeist of water charges and in 2019 the Greens have capitalised on the prevailing awareness of climate change.

Unfortunately our chattering political commentators seem to overanalyse these results and are harping on as if Sinn Fein have been reduced to political roadkill after this election. Most voters are, with respect to them, shallow and fickle. More politely, they're not interested in high-level politics, they are simply attracted to parties and politicians which deliver them solutions to issues that matter to them at that moment.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 'C' Word: We Need To Speak About Sexual Education

"Over the coming years, your bodies will be changing." It was 2012, in an uncomfortable primary school classroom. This was it: the day that everyone had been anticipating for years. We heard whispers of what to expect from siblings over the weeks prior. We were nervous, anxious and very giddy. We were getting 'The Talk' . For those not from Ireland, 'The Talk' is the colloquial expression for the introduction sexual education class that primary school students receive at around the age of 12. It's an afternoon in which the girls go red as beetroots at the mention of menstruation and the lads hide their smirks and giggles with their jumpers when shown diagrams of the male anatomy. Unfortunately in my case and in the case of my classmates our introduction to sex education was the practically the extent of our sexual education. There's a reason that it's labelled 'the' talk, in the singular, I suppose. Over the 6 years following, we had p
Post a Comment
Read more

Legal Process and Values

I was struck by a remark made by Jolyon Maugham QC in an interview with LBC's James O'Brien . Maugham is a high-flying tax lawyer turned Brexit crusader, leading a number of constitutional challenges to the English government's handling of matters since Art 50 was triggered. The conversation turned to how great lawyers are not innately good politicians (Keir Starmer's name was dropped with uncomfortable regularity). In fact, the two skillsets might be somewhat mutually incompatible. Maugham noted that lawyers are obsessed with process. By that he means not just the granular detail that the law requires, but a slavish focus on the rules as prescribed by the law and their application, as opposed to the substance or merit of those rules. Though this might seem a somewhat trite observation, it reminded me of a remark made by Michael Kirby, a former Australian High Court judge. Kirby J as he was identified in cases, was a senior judge for many years and was known colloquiall
Post a Comment
Read more

Gender Balance on Irish Radio Playlists

Irish music has gone through somewhat of a renaissance over the past number of years. With an influx of new Irish voices, we have a diversity of genres in Irish music. No longer is this country’s repertoire limited to folk and rock. I was fortunate to have experienced this revolution first hand. From 2017-2018 I was presenting a Sunday night Irish music show on FM104 called the Open Mic. The producer and I always made a concerted effort to have diversity on each show, both in terms of gender and genres. From the hip-hop beats of Soule and Erika Cody to the blues of Wyvern Lingo and the experimental jazzy riffs of BARQ. It was a pleasure to hear all of these artists perform live. Also – it was a rare luxury to have a degree of control over what songs were played and what acts were interviewed. Usually decisions about the music are made by a programme director. This week, publicist Linda Coogan Byrne published research on the percentage of Irish female musicians played by
Post a Comment
Read more