There’s been a bit of speculation that senior Sinn Féin figures at Stormont like Conor Murphy and John O’Dowd have been passed over for ministerial positions to leave one of them free to step in as deputy first minister if Martin McGuinness decided to spend more time with his fishing rod.
We can only hope it’s his fishing rod that he spends time with in retirement developing his angling skills rather than those of poetry writing.
However, we find now that none of that is true. McGuinness has told us he intends to stay in post until ‘at least’ 2021, health permitting. It’s the smart thing to say. Once you set a date for retirement, as David Cameron discovered when in an unguarded moment he revealed he wouldn’t do a third stint as prime minister, you fire the starting gun on your succession. Furthermore certain of your colleagues begin to view you as dead meat, a lame duck, a bye ball, whatever metaphor they choose to signify a leader is on the way out.
People begin to transfer allegiance to prospective successors. They know the departing leader won’t be around to exact retribution for disloyalty. Besides, it might be a good idea to hitch your wagon to a new pretender who might reward you in future.
So it’s the right line for McGuinness to take. However it doesn’t mean he’ll go. He’ll be 71 in 2021. Donald Trump plans to be US president and he’s 70 next week. Hillary Clinton is 68. Which of them wins will still leave someone in his or her mid-seventies in the White House so his age is no reason McGuinness couldn’t run again in 2021.
All the same, questions apply to his comrade in arms south of the border who looks a lot less fit and sharp than the Derryman as well as being prone to acute foot in mouth disease, especially before elections. Of course the more critics and observers suggest Adams rides into the sunset in Donegal the more certain it is he will remain, for much the same reasons as McGuinness, though unlike in Adams’s case no one is seriously suggesting McGuinness is past it.
For Adams the decision is likely to come sooner. The betting is on a general election in the Republic next year by which time parties will have drawn breath and collected enough money to go again and try to create a stable government.
By the way, the prospect of an early collapse and new election to the Dáil is one reason why Sinn Féin puts up with so much of Arlene Foster’s hubris and it’s also a reason they took on two big financial/commercial departments at Stormont. They want to be able to demonstrate they can run a stable administration in the north and produce competent economic policies and decisions.
In the run up to the last election Fianna Fáil point blank said they would not go into coalition with Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin’s response will be if they can be stable long-suffering partners with the DUP why do Fianna Fáil think they’re superior to the DUP?
Of course there are completely different reasons for Sinn Féin sharing power with the DUP compared to a governing coalition in the Republic. Still, given their results in February, very good, but disappointing all the same, coalition in the Dáil is clearly Sinn Féin’s immediate goal.
Gerry Adams will have to decide whether he can afford a repeat of his hapless media interviews in January next time and to what extent his remaining damages the party’s ambition. If he had any wit he’d take an early decision to let Mary Lou become party leader while he stayed on as a TD and party president.
As for McGuinness, polls in April showed him the politician here most people thought was doing a ‘Very Good or Good’ job followed closely by the other half of the executive office, Arlene. However the difference is that at 46 next month no one is calculating when Arlene might need to go.
Painful as it may be, you’ll have to put up with that distinctive voice for another twenty years at least if we go by Sinn Féin standards of longevity.
