Opinion

Leadership means knowing when it is time to go

David Ford, grey but leaderly, leaves the Alliance Party after fifteen years in as good shape as it deserves
David Ford, grey but leaderly, leaves the Alliance Party after fifteen years in as good shape as it deserves David Ford, grey but leaderly, leaves the Alliance Party after fifteen years in as good shape as it deserves

SUCH a last minute flap that Donald Trump is this far along the route to be president of the United States.

(Do we still say ‘leader of the free world’?) The flap is nonsense. Trump is no more or less ‘worthy’ of the White House at 70 than 10, thirty or forty years ago.

He has never shown political leadership, slippery quality that it is. The search for it exercises minds here too, which might stump people who know nothing beyond the size of this place and its mock-up of a legislature.

It still makes sense to assess those who claim to lead - and who could, but will not. The prospect of change at both ends of the political spectrum sharpens the focus.

Alliance leader David Ford took himself off the map last week without fuss, as befits his decades as Presbyterian elder and the social worker he once was.

Martin McGuinness by contrast in classic republican fashion, as might be expected of a transitioned IRA boss, made a further finicky mini-move to set up the moment when he and Gerry Adams ride off, singly or together, out of the spotlight if not into the sunset.

‘The leadership’ will decide when they leave, said McGuinness, though it will be ‘for discussion between Gerry and myself’ whether to go together or separately.

Ah, leadership; not as in a sour-faced, largely-male SF committee but the quality itself, hard to define but unmistakeable in action.

Ford, grey but leaderly, leaves Alliance after fifteen years in as good shape as it deserves. The lonely steeples of Adams and McGuinness, the only people longer in post than him, stand out even more sharply.

Parties north and south shuffle off leaders. Not Sinn Féin. Adams the relatively recent TD but SF’s figurehead, elected in 1983, the year he also became MP for West Belfast, far outstrips Enda Kenny, Taoiseach and also father of the Dáil.

Enda has only led Fine Gael for a piffling fourteen years. Fianna Fáil, Irish Labour, the flaky recent turnover in British parties, Adams on his pinnacle has watched them come and go.

Compared to McGuinness, Adams has been storm-tossed. The Republic’s politics ask more of a transitioned IRA theorist than Stormont’s shameless job-share.

McGuinness, two years younger and if we’re to go by their comparative mis-speaks in much better shape than his president, looks out of his very own castle at DUP and UUP newbies, newbiest of all an SDLP stripling from his own town.

Ford the departing comparative veteran and the ex-IRA man, nearly of an age, probably haven’t had many experiences to share, few enough confidences about managing their parties.

The Adams-McGuinness team emerged as the Troubles began, young Turks to long-relegated figures like Dáithi Ó Conaill and Sean MacStiofain.

Adams-McGuinness led Sinn Féin into the public leadership of the republican ‘movement’, blunted the cutting edge of violence to make a long peace.

They made the leadership a northern one. When they go, together or after an interval for show sake, they will be making way for a succession already visible in the south as against what is an indistinct blur now in the north.

Conor Murphy, the only name trucked back and forth as successor, can hardly imagine brightening himself up in the McGuinness space.

Maybe that doesn’t matter. Sinn Féin is about to be led from the south again.

The collective can invent new titles and roles for the departing grandees, save faces, harvest the last flickers of charisma.

Adams, 68 this month, must see the draw, if also the drawbacks, of Mary-Lou McDonald, never off the air, easy on the ear, or perhaps the squawkier Pearse Doherty.

Sharp cookies both, Republic-born and bred. McDonald mentions the north often enough, dutifully rather than with enthusiasm though who can blame her.

But like Doherty, her special subject is the Republic, not the narrow ground Stormont is supposed to administer.

Does it matter that northern Sinn Féin has little leadership clout left and scant talent? Probably not. When McGuinness stood with Hugh Orde and Peter Robinson on the steps at Stormont and called the dissidents traitors to Ireland, it and he mattered.

Arlene Foster standing shoulder to shoulder with a UDA-linked group as yet more official funding sluices into paramilitary hands is post-irony leadership.

For now SF can extract no more in the north. Adams is overdue retirement, the northern ‘project’ out of steam.

The Adams-McGuinness dual monarchy has served its purpose and run its course. Leadership includes knowing when to quit and doing it cleanly.