IT is quite something to increase your share of the vote by 38 per cent and still have that seen as a disappointment. Sinn Fein is blaming a hostile media for this perception but that is shooting the messenger. The party’s advances in the Irish general election have too clearly been made down a recession-specific anti-austerity cul de sac, which it will now have to waste time backing out of while Fianna Fail gets away in the smoke. Damage was done at Stormont too, with an apparent split in Martin McGuinness’s office over cross-border positioning on welfare reform. [...]