Opinion

John Manley: Sinn Féin senses the south is next

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. Picture by Damien Storan/PA Wire
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. Picture by Damien Storan/PA Wire Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald. Picture by Damien Storan/PA Wire

THIS was a Sinn Féin ard fheis with a difference. It came two years after the party’s last conference and was the first time elected representatives and activists had come together in any numbers since the onset of the pandemic. What has also changed since the last ard fheis is Sinn Féin’s standing south of the border. Recent opinion polls give the party a 10-point lead over nearest rival Fine Gael, its highest ever standing.

Amid crises in housing and health, younger voters are seemingly abandoning the Republic’s big two and embracing a Sinn Féin message that owes more to the left than old style republicanism. There are many parallels with the route taken by the Republican Movement’s 'official' wing a generation or more previous.

If the opinion poll support were reflected in a general election it would give Sinn Féin up to 60 TDs, making it the biggest party in the Dáil. That result would leave the party 20 seats short of a majority yet it would still enable republicans to wield unprecedented power in Dublin.

This prize is clearly Sinn Féin’s present priority. The axis of power in the party has been steadily shifting southwards, and under Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership that process has accelerated. With its readiness for government and the leader’s stated aim of being the next taoiseach comes further normalisation and the ditching of one of the last key policies that differentiated Sinn Féin from its establishment rivals.

The special criminal court, which in the past was used to jail Provisional IRA members, largely mirrored the Diplock set-up in the north and its non-jury trial successor. Sinn Féin campaigned for the post-Good Friday Agreement abolition of Diplock courts but has quietly acquiesced to its replacement through its role in the Stormont administration, so its could be argued that the party is merely moving to harmonise its policy on both sides of the border.

Among those backing the motion, once regarded by physical force republicans as heresy, was North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly, who described it as a “very decisive initiative”. In the end, the motion, couched in terms of standing up to criminal gangs, received strong backing, demonstrating the distance the party has travelled in recent years.

Elsewhere during the shorter than usual proceedings, the focus was very much on the south and attacking the current government’s record on housing, health and rising living costs. Stormont and its poor record on delivery barely figured, unless it was to highlight the DUP’s resistance to all things progressive. The northern arm of the party arguably looks lacklustre in comparison to the dynamism displayed in the Republic, and were it not for the growing momentum towards a border poll, there’d have been little to spark the interest of northerners present on Saturday.

Sinn Féin’s day appears to be coming, yet being in government, especially as the largest coalition partner, brings responsibility and large doses of realism. At the moment, the pathway to power in the south looks reasonably straightforward but the real challenge surely begins after electoral success.