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36 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 37
McDonald hs blown
hrough old ceilings of
suppor for Sinn Féin,
obliered he old pos-
Civil Wr “wo-nd--hlf-
pry-srucure” by building
inernl coliions in her own
pry, bu hey re frgile
B
ecause Sinn Féin has evolved
dramatically from the IRA there is a
tendency to regard its evolution as
more interesting than that of less
colourful parties and its recent run of
political success as signs that its entry into
government is unalterably inevitable. This is a
fallacy. Nothing is inevitable in politics for Sinn
Féin or any other party. Imputing an ineluctable
destiny makes it all too easy to underestimate the
magnitude of the party’s practical achievement
and diminish the obstacles it has already
overcome.
It is salutary to remember that Mary Lou
McDonald’s tenure as leader of Sinn Féin was not
initially a success. The logic of replacing Gerry
Adams with a younger middle-class woman from
the Republic was to move the party past Adams’s
IRA baggage and with that to remove an obstacle
for voters in the Republic, as distinct from in the
North where that baggage was an electoral asset,
to vote for the party.
When she inherited the role from Adams in
2018, Sinn Féin appeared to have hit an upper
limit to its electoral appeal. Adams had managed
to grow the share of fi rst preference votes from
about 7% to a consistent average of about 15%
between 2011 and 2018. McDonald initially
presided over actual declines in vote share (to
6.4%) in the presidential elections in October
2018 followed by a modest recovery to previous
levels of support in the 2019 European and local
elections (11.7% and 9.5% respectively).
However, since June 2019, McDonald has
blown through that apparent ceiling of support
and, in doing so, has obliterated the old post-Civil
War two-party-structure — the “two-and-a-half-
party-structure” by assembling an impressive
coalition of disparate interests under her party’s
banner. Sinn Féin’s ratings in opinion polls have
surpassed its previous highwater mark in the
2020 general election and continued to grow
since. In every poll since the 2020 general
election, Sinn Féin’s support has exceeded that,
and during all of 2023 it polled between 28% and
35%.
The dip in popularity recorded at the start of
2024 may be an anomaly or it could be that Sinn
Féin has peaked too soon - it is too soon to tell.
The party’s success is distinctly derived from
Mary Lou McDonald who remains consistently
more popular than her party; voters have faith in
Mary Lou personally to satisfy their inchoate
The meaning of
ourselves alone
Sinn Féin, a Republican party, faces up to
the new electoral reality that nationalism
and socialism generate competing
policies notably on immigration
By J Vivian Cooke
appetite for change. Polling suggests newer
supporters are attracted to Sinn Féin because it
articulates a growing disillusionment with the
dismal record of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in
government rather than a positive attraction to
the party’s policy platform.
Sinn Féin has made the most of the long-term
process of voter disaggregation in which the core
vote of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael has all but
disappeared. Other opposition political parties
have singularly failed to capture the allegiance of
these disa ected voters.
Sinn Féin has won support of voters from across
a wide range of di erent demographics and
interests. Where its support 15 years ago was
older than the average voter and predominantly
in border counties and working-class Dublin
constituencies, now the party is generally the
most popular of all the parties with younger
voters; has elected TDs up and down the country,
and has greatly extended its appeal to the middle
classes.
In a 2022 interview with the Currency, Eoin
O’Broin, outlined how important “coalition
building” is to the party’s growth. Rather than
allying with existing political parties, O’Broin
advocates identifying itself with extra-
parliamentary social movements whose
membership profi le accords with his vision of it
as a party of activists. In passing I note that the
internally held view of Sinn Féin as a party of
activists has been used by party leaders as an
explicit justifi cation for the ascendancy of the
Connolly House cabinet in Belfast over its elected
representatives. It can all be seen as a fresh take
on the long-retired strategy of “entryism” at
which the party excelled when it was deeply
unpopular, and which aging Trotskyites still
embrace.
POLITICS
36 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 37
However, polling data demonstrate that this
new block of Sinn Féin voters and especially
activists who cut their teeth on single-issue social
campaigns do not have a deep anity for the
party’s culture and history, and are apathetic
about the party’s goal of an all-island republic
This is implicitly acknowledged every time the
party asserts that young voters are not put o by
the Provisional IRA’s campaign of terrorism. Some
policies have notably found greater favour with
voters from Northen Ireland, rather than the
Republic.
Sinn Féin’s challenge is to continue to attract
new supporters but also to maintain the fragile
cohesion of existing supporters. It needs to focus
on the depth as much as the width of its support:
to factor for fickleness. The experience of the UK
Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is instructive:
Labour greatly expanded its support among
outside (often single-issue) activists who
continued to identify and gave their loyalty
primarily to those causes rather than the Labour
Party. In a separate interview with the Currency,
McDonald showed herself to be acutely conscious
of this tension and explicitly identified one of her
leadership tasks as maintaining a balance
between the dierent interest groups assembled
under the Sinn Féin umbrella.
The second tension is between new voters and
traditional voters. Where O’Broin is the leading
light of the Hipster wing, McDonald represents, if
not quite is the undisputed leader of, her Beardies
and Balaclavas section of the party, though she
certainly mediates the Hard Men to the newer
members of the party. Where Mary Lou McDonald
appeals to nationalism, O’Broin is preoccupied by
economic structural issues (he would
undoubtedly use the term “paradigms”). While
O’Broin is busy fighting the machine and global
capitalism, Mary Lou still battles the forces of the
crown on the island of Ireland.
Moreover, traditional Sinn Féin voters hold
more conservative social views than younger
ones. Alienated older Sinn Féin voters might find
a haven in Sinn Féin refusenik Peadar Tobin’s pro-
life Republicanism, but these voters stuck with
the party through far darker days and retain
influence over and share a vision with, the party
leadership. If any set of voters is likely to abandon
the party at the ballot box it will be the arrivistes.
Sinn Fein’s preoccupation with the National
Question and the focus of its political strategy on
housing and the economy leaves it struggling
with other issues whichn some respects
transcend the division between the old and the
new. They are also reflective of deeper divisions
about what it means to be a Republican. Some
expressions of Republicanism merge with
popularism, while others dictate an ascetic
defence of the institutions of democracy, the long-
term and the rights of minorities. Republicanism
in of itself doesn’t really imply a stance on the
environment or on immigration for example.
Each of the main parties is trying to choose the
battleground on which the next election will be
fought and none of themsee any electoral
advantage to setting out a clear and decisive
position on either the environment or immigration.
Both populist instincts and narrow sectional
interests are in conflict with the realities of what
is required if these problems are to be solved.
Voters for whom these issues matter will have to
look elsewhere for leadership on these issues.
On immigration, Sinn Féin finds itself faced
with an uncomfortable dilemma: 66% of the
population now believe we have taken too many
refugees. Majorities in all demographics share
that view but it is strongest among working class
voters and more precisely it is a view shared by
76% of Sinn Féin voters. Yet it is a view that
conflicts with its left-wing credentials and the
instincts of its younger progressive members.
Where other nationalist parties internationally
have stretched the logic of their nationalism to
embrace ugly anti-immigrant populism, Sinn Féin
has scrupulously eschewed this temptation on
moral grounds, and in doing so, has generated
rare respect from the liberal middle classes,
young people and the media.
RED C’s Richard Colwell recently wrote the
following in the Business Post:
“For Sinn Féin, the issue of immigration doesn’t
appear to have been solved, despite a move by
the party in recent months to build a narrative that
was more supportive of those that opposed
immigration. The party is certainly more at risk
from fragmentation of the vote to more anti-
immigration and right-wing candidates and
parties, given much of its support is built on a
wave of anti-establishment sentiment, rather
than one of support for its own policies.
We had initially seen that the loss of support for
the party was being driven by younger voters, but
today’s drop in support is across all demographic
groups. This is exactly the reverse of how their
support grew in 2020 and beyond, and must be
of significant concern for the party, when they
appeared to be on the cusp of power in the
Republic of Ireland”.
Immigration and the environment are wedge
issues in Irish politics splintering existing blocs
of voters and for Sinn Féin they are the perfect
issues to divide the left from the nationalist wings
of the party. It is for this reason that Sinn Féin has
been denounced as traitors by the rabid
protestors and arsonists outside international
protection applicant accommodation centres. It
is the same addled nonsense that has led some
to promote the laughable conspiracy theory that
Fine Gael’s ad hoc response to sheltering the
victims of the War in Ukraine was contrived as a
political trap for Sinn Féin.
The old dogs in the civil war parties are well
versed in the art of exploiting opposition
weaknesses. And they bear a genuine dislike for
the insurgents because of their history of support
for violence, because of a perception that they are
radical, because they are viciously negative and
populist but perhaps most of all because they
have shown themselves to be threateningly good
at politics, a threat to them now, and potentially
even more in the future.
Sinn Féin’s reticence on this issue might be
informed by the experience of Fianna Fáil and Fine
Gael which have taken disciplined and coherent
pro-migrant stances at a national level which is at
odds with the views of some their County
Councillors and has strained their internal
homogeneity. 2024’s local and European
elections are, in Reif and Schmidt’s sense,
second-order elections and as such are more
favourable to parties of protest and peripheral
parties. Consequently, Sinn Féin will have the
dicult task of reconciling its national priorities
as a government-in-waiting with the impulse to
increase its vote by capturing fractious local
impulses.
At some point the policies required to attract
new voters will alienate more, existing voters.
That could be a tipping point for Mary Lou
McDonald’s leadership.
Even if Sinn Féin remains the largest party after
the next general election; even if it captures a
greater share of the first preference vote; even if
it increases its Dáil representation, it could still
find itself in opposition yet again – despite telling
itself that it has “won” a second consecutive
general election. SF needs to take seats from Fine
Gael and Fianna Fail if it is to form a government.
Winning seats from potential coalition partners
on the left makes them no closer to forming a
government.
Irish elections are not necessarily won by the
largest party. Despite what Sinn Féin told itself
and anyone else who would listen, it did not win
the last election. It is easy to identify the winners
of Irish elections – they get to shake hands with
the President in Áras an Uachtaráin.
FF nd FG ber
genuine dislike for he SF
insurgens nd re king
suspiciously disciplined
nd coheren pro-migrn
snce, h my es heir
own inernl homogeneiy
The competition
