For some reason it didn’t get much publicity maybe because of the Bank Holiday weekend but Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou has overtaken Fianna Fail’s Micheál Martin in the leader’s satisfaction stakes.
She’s sitting on 46 per cent to Martin’s 44 per cent. They’re both well behind Leo Varadkar but that’s not the point, or two points. First it’s confirmation that Mary Lou has officially arrived as a major player in the south’s politics and secondly it spells serious trouble for Martin – not Fianna Fáil.
Of course satisfaction ratings are notoriously fickle. Martin is down four points since the last tally, perhaps because he has made a horlicks of handling the abortion referendum but he could be up again in the summer. On the other hand Mary Lou is up seven points since February when she was anointed president of Sinn Féin. In her case the boost to her ratings was probably not unconnected with a brilliant performance on the Late Late Show the Friday after the DUP reneged on the deal they should have clinched on Valentine’s Day.
That Late Late Show interview introduced the new leader of Sinn Féin to the people of the Republic and they liked what they saw. Her best answer was on the abortion referendum when she was being confronted with various possible legislative scenarios to replace the present iniquitous constitutional block. What would be the ramifications of abortion being freely available up to twelve weeks? ‘I trust women’, quoth Mary Lou to thunderous applause from the audience. Since then her star has risen and Sinn Féin’s polling figures with her.
As you’ve read here before Micheál Martin has boxed himself in comprehensively on the question of a post election deal with Sinn Féin. He has also led the attack on Sinn Féin in the Dáil at every opportunity fearful voters believe he’s going to enter a coalition with SF after the next election and therefore they switch to Fine Gael. It has all gone horribly wrong for him.
Martin hoped to draw level or nearly level with Fine Gael and cobble together a coalition of Labour and Independents. There’s no chance of that, not with the last poll showing FF down eight per cent in Dublin where they’ve alienated voters with their collection of religiously motivated TDs defying Martin’s Yes position on the referendum.
As for Fine Gael, any chance they can repeat the present confidence and supply arrangement with FF is remote.
Fianna Fáilers are strongly opposed to keeping FG in power for another Dáil. Equally remote is FG’s chance of winning anything near the required 80 seats from their starting point of the present 50. So they’ll need a coalition. They’ll not manage to produce a government majority figure of 81 herding the motley crew of Labour, Independents, Greens, Trots and Social Democrats. Sinn Féin is their only option. Don’t say they should form a coalition with Fianna Fáil. That would cause conniptions in FF and a mutiny against Varadkar in FG.
No, there’s only one choice staring Varadkar in the face and that’s Mary Lou, even though she told RTÉ he was ‘smarmy’. On present showing SF are heading into the high twenties in seats from the present twenty-three, maybe even close to thirty. That would fit beautifully with FG on a seat tally in the mid-fifties.
All this bodes ill for Micheál Martin who has nailed his colours to the mast on refusal to deal with Sinn Féin. He’s already paying the price. You might note SF joined with Varadkar to elect his County Armagh unionist candidate to the Seanad last month, dissing Martin’s man. On present arithmetic Martin is a goner next year.
It’s not all smooth water towards Tánaiste Mary Lou however. Not everyone in Sinn Féin in the south is keen to get into bed with the Blueshirts. She has a lot of convincing to do there. How would SF retain their left-wing radical credentials in government with the right-wing Fine Gael? How to avoid being used as a mudguard by the bigger party, the invariable fate of the smaller party in a coalition? Still, the northerners on SF’s ard chomhairle and ard fheisanna will come to her aid. For them getting into government in the south is an article of faith.
