Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Maintaining party unity will be Mary Lou McDonald's biggest challenge

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

Patrick Murphy
Patrick Murphy Patrick Murphy

A week on from what is expected to be the first of several farewell tours by Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin faces what might best be described as an interesting future. Well, two interesting futures, north and south, unless we avoid a post-Brexit border.

Some say it was an odd time for Gerry to leave (and he will go many times before he departs) but this is political show business. The southern electorate is being told that SF is now qualified to enter government.

Many commentators claim that without Adams, the party will do well in the next election, which implies that hitherto the only thing keeping them out of government (even though they refused to enter it) was Adams. That is the response he hoped for.

His prolonged departure will reinforce that message. Welcome to the world of political conditioning, which takes control of the electoral agenda, its vocabulary and environment before the election is even announced.

Adams has evolved from being an electoral weakness into an electoral opportunity. He will tour the country, backslapping and signing autographs, divorced from the party leadership, but canvassing for Sinn Féin and maybe even the Irish presidency.

It is a remarkably clever strategy. However, its success depends on the election's timing, future events and the other parties. It also depends on the performance of She who will come after Him, Mary Lou McDonald.

It is important for a departing leader's reputation that his/her successor should have less ability. McDonald's style is that of a tank commander. When Adams points the tank in the right direction, she can demolish all in front of her. But left to her own judgment, will she know the right direction? Only time and circumstances will tell, as Arlene Foster discovered.

She certainly talks a good game, but Pearse Doherty shows greater political instinct and Louise O'Reilly demonstrates a better gut feeling for social and economic issues. Mary Lou may be more provisional than permanent.

Her biggest challenge will be maintaining a unified party, geographically threatened by the post-Brexit border. The person who could best straddle that border is retiring.

Following the failure of a 30 year war for Irish unity and a 20 year pro-Stormont campaign as a step towards that unity, maybe it was time for Gerry to leave before nationalists realise that the border has not gone away you know - and before Brexit partitions Sinn Féin.

Mary Lou could usefully bring Conor Murphy in as vice-president for some cross-border straddling. The alternative risks republican division, a geographical schism based on handling two different political and economic systems. Ironically, modern Sinn Féin risks being split by the border, the very institution it was founded to abolish.

Already SF has an internal cultural divide: what is called party discipline in the north is seen as harassment in the south. Electoral success has also been built on two different ideologies.

Northern votes were won by promoting sectarianism to divert attention from cutting public sector services and jobs, shrinking welfare and reducing corporation tax. Southern success has been based on opposing those same policies.

Sinn Féin collapsed Stormont to prevent other Dáil parties from exploiting its northern social and economic failings. Now it has gone further. By advocating the British-Irish Council's revival SF is not, as some suggest, hoping Dublin will secure an Irish language act - it is arguing for joint authority to link Dublin with London's austerity in the north.

Instead of the taoiseach accusing Adams in the Dáil of northern social and economic failure, Adams hopes to be able to confront Varadkar with that very same accusation. The taoiseach has already displayed his willingness to walk into the trap. Another clever Adams strategy.

But it is a short-term solution. He has left Michelle O'Neill an impossible task in trying to achieve the party's stated aim of returning to Stormont, while setting the bar unnecessarily high for the DUP. She also has to face the more conservative northern electorate on abortion.

Some in Sinn Féin suggest that the party's abortion policy, not as radical then as it is now, cost Michelle Gildernew her Westminster seat in 2015. She won it back this year, although some Catholic clergy privately suggest that it is now more moral to vote DUP. Maybe it was time for Gerry to publicly distance himself from that one too.

Ronald Reagan said politics is like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while and have a hell of a close. This is going to be one hell of a close, but how long the show runs for after that remains to be seen.