Opinion

Alex Kane: There is a sense that Sinn Fein's unity strategy has run out of steam

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Gerry Adams says the Dublin government needs to initiate a discussion about Irish unity. Picture Mal McCann.
Gerry Adams says the Dublin government needs to initiate a discussion about Irish unity. Picture Mal McCann. Gerry Adams says the Dublin government needs to initiate a discussion about Irish unity. Picture Mal McCann.

In January 2017 I was a guest speaker at a Sinn Féin 'Uniting Ireland' conference in Dublin's Mansion House. One of the points I made was that Sinn Féin wouldn't be able to push the project alone; if Irish unity was ever to come it would only come when the Irish government and political establishment took the issue seriously.

Moreover, there was no chance of it coming in the absence of a costed, thought-through plan which addressed a huge range of challenges, questions and fears. I also said that Sinn Féin, 'given its baggage in the eyes of unionists,' would never be able to make a credible unity plan to non-nationalists in Northern Ireland.

So it was interesting to read Gerry Adams's latest blog, in which he argued that there was no point in rushing into Irish unity without a plan and, accordingly, called on the Irish government to produce one. I must admit that I thought he was simply long-fingering the unity project.

Sinn Féin has had two terrible elections in the south (losing a third of their vote, half of their councillors and 2 of their 3 MEPs); yet an opinion poll on election day indicated that 65 per cent of Irish voters favoured Irish unity. That suggests that not enough southern voters are taking Sinn Féin seriously on unity. They may want it at some point (the poll questioning didn't go into any details about the terms and conditions of unity), but don't view Sinn Féin as the frontrunner on the issue.

It's also worth noting that in the council and Euro elections in Northern Ireland Sinn Féin didn't exactly show any signs of electoral progress. Fair enough, they didn't collapse, but nor did they make the sort of gains they were clearly anticipating. The election literature made the link between their overall vote and the unity project, yet their vote actually slipped; forcing them into the absurd position of claiming they had gifted 30,000 or so votes to Alliance.

Looking at the performances on both sides of the border it is not unreasonable to conclude that the 'England's misfortune is Ireland's opportunity' card re Brexit isn't doing Sinn Féin any favours. They have been banging on since the late summer of 2016 about the political dynamics having shifted in favour of Irish unity; they have campaigned to win over soft-n nationalists and soft-u unionists to unity; they have prioritised a border poll above and beyond everything else; and they have allowed the assembly/executive to remain mothballed. Put bluntly, it looks like the steam has run out of the present strategy.

The electorate in the south has grown bored with Sinn Féin's party-of-permanent-protest stance on just about every issue. They also seem bored with Mary Lou McDonald's leadership; sensing, perhaps, that she should focus more on the south and less on the north. They may also think that Sinn Féin's inability to cut a deal with the DUP and restore a coalition government is a sign that the party isn't, in fact, much good at coalition.

If that is the case then why increase their vote in the south? And there are signs, too, that a section of Sinn Féin's electorate in the north now believes that unity is less important than a government which addresses a growing mountain of problems in health and education.

So, is Adams preparing the ground for a row-back? Has it finally dawned on the party that Sinn Féin's 'ourselves alone' approach to unity isn't working? Are they simply buying themselves more time? Is it all part of a broader plan to blame the Irish government for their own failure? A couple of weeks ago, in a piece looking in much more detail at the electoral figures, I concluded that Sinn Féin would learn the lessons from this failure and respond accordingly. It looks to me like Adams's blog is part of that response. The party has already tailored its unity project strategy towards the longer game.

But here's the real problem: the chaos of Brexit afforded Sinn Féin an opportunity which it never saw coming, yet if it can't deliver unity on the back of this chaos it could be another generation before there's another opportunity like this one. By the way, I also think this present opportunity explains the recent surge in activity from a broader swathe of civic nationalism: and that same growing sense that the opportunity is slipping from their grasp.

Adams is calling upon the Irish government to prepare a plan for unity. The civic nationalists have written two 'open' letters to the Irish government in the last 18 months. That's because they know that unity is going nowhere without significant input from the Irish government. I'm not anticipating that input anytime soon. That's going to be a real problem for Sinn Féin.