Opinion

Newton Emerson: After election setback, Sinn Fein is signalling a return to office to deliver radical policies

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill flanked by party negotiator Conor Murphy and European MEP Martina Anderson at Stormont. Picture by Mal McCann
Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill flanked by party negotiator Conor Murphy and European MEP Martina Anderson at Stormont. Picture by Mal McCann Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill flanked by party negotiator Conor Murphy and European MEP Martina Anderson at Stormont. Picture by Mal McCann

Sinn Féin has now tried being in and out of government in Northern Ireland. Neither has worked to its electoral advantage. Forming an executive with the DUP in 2007 boosted its vote from 24 to 28 per cent but over the next decade its vote fell back to 24 per cent.

Walking out of the executive in 2017 boosted Sinn Féin’s vote back up to 28 per cent but the recent council and European elections, in which the collapse of Stormont was clearly an issue, saw its vote decline to 22 per cent.

It seems the high drama of flouncing in or out of office is offset by the dreariness or weariness of what follows.

Sinn Féin is promising a reassessment of its political strategy, north and south. With northern politics not delivering for the party, in or out, there is some concern about where the republican movement might go next. Loyalists are speculating about a summer of street agitation, although if they foresee such a trap they could always avoid marching into it.

Less paranoid opponents are wondering if Sinn Féin will double down on the misnamed ‘civic nationalist’ strategy of declaring everything permanently broken, with a border poll the only solution.

However, the signal from Sinn Féin itself is of another approach: returning to office to deliver radical, relevant policies.

The party produced a policy document last week, following a year of work, entitled “Towards a New Employment Model: Strengthening Worker’s Rights”.

Its specific proposals are to support the living wage, ban zero-hours contracts and bogus self-employment, improve parental leave and redundancy pay, clarify unfair dismissal laws and encourage trade union recognition and activity.

Sinn Féin national chair Declan Kearney, closely associated with the civic nationalist strategy, circulated the employment policy document again on social media this week as more dreadful election results came in from the Republic.

Although focused entirely on Northern Ireland, the document answers the perception gelling against Sinn Féin in the Republic of a party that does nothing while objecting to everything.

In fact, it dovetails beautifully with a host of republican positions, linking workers’ rights to the general ‘rights’ agenda and triangulating between left-wing and nationalist rivals on social and economic issues.

The whole thing has the feel of something worked out by a committee on lots of graph paper. Nor is this the first time Sinn Féin has attempted an over-arching new approach. In 2017, John O’Dowd revealed the party was examining the devolution of income tax to pursue similar policy goals.

It might seem trite to observe that Sinn Féin’s choice is not between simply being in or out of government but doing something worthwhile in government. However, that observation has to be made. We have a political system designed to stop parties doing anything interesting. Elections are fought on constitutional posturing then everyone troops into Stormont to have their ministries allocated by formula, before agreeing a programme for government that inevitably produces the most anodyne common denominator. Worse still, this design has only been tightened up.

On his last day as education minister in 2002, Martin McGuinness announced the abolition of the 11-plus.

The DUP became obsessed with this so-called ‘solo run’, portraying it as the defining flaw of the Good Friday Agreement and negotiating and selling the St Andrews Agreement as preventing such a thing ever happening again. There was further tightening of the consensus requirement as Stormont evolved from all-party to two-party coalition. Most people assumed this was positive, yet it led to a crushing deadlock, permitting only managerialist administration. That favoured the DUP as defender of the status quo, while undoubtedly fuelling the nationalist disaffection and frustration that eventually brought about Stormont’s demise.

Logically, unless mandatory power-sharing is scrapped, the best way to restore Stormont is to give ministers - or more correctly individual parties - as much solo-run freedom as possible.

There was a hint of this from the business community last week. Retail NI proposed that Stormont talks consider devising the programme for government first, then letting parties choose their ministries, so that at least everyone would have a remit over areas for which they had policy ambitions.

But that was one little straw in a wind still blowing in the opposite direction. Even Sinn Féin wants restoration based on ‘respect’, as if it and the DUP must be nice to each other forever. That really is trite. The test of government must be letting Sinn Féin govern, whether the DUP agrees with it or not.

newton@irishnews.com