Imagine a party that’s a cross between the SNP, Syriza and Ukip – one that is anti-establishment and combines the self-regard of the plucky outsider with an intermittent lead in the opinion polls. Imagine that and you’re getting close to the character of Sinn Féin, as manifest in its party conference this weekend. The last you may have heard of Sinn Féin was as a purely Northern Irish outfit, getting on just dandy with the DUP if intermittently embarrassed by reminders of its past during the Troubles.
Well, think again. The party regularly outpolls the major party of government in the Republic, Fine Gael, and seems likely to do just fine in the election in Northern Ireland. It faces both north and south, and as Gerry Adams said again and again, they ‘want to be the largest single party in government’ in the south. Add to that its fearsome political correctness – not an attribute anyone would have noticed during the Troubles – and you’ve got the remarkable political phenomenon of an anti-austerity party which takes the national question awfully seriously. One moment, Gerry Adams, party leader, is talking about giving the national flag more respect, the next, delegates are voting for liberalising the abortion laws in the Republic and Martin McGuinness is condemning ‘sectarianism, homophobia and bigotry’.
And just to compound the superliminal message that what’s good for Greece is good for Ireland, the conference gave an ecstatic reception – two standing ovations – to Euclid Tsakalotos, Syriza’s deputy foreign minister, who apologised for his native English accent, saying by way of mitigation he was in fact married to a Celt.
The most obvious element of the party’s appeal is that, as Gerry Adams put it, ‘Sinn Féin does not do austerity’, and it doesn’t do it on either side of the border. So, facing both ways, he condemned the Tory cuts and the Irish government’s austerity programme in general and its imposition of a terrifically unpopular water charge in particular. In his leader’s address, Adams came across as genial, relaxed and funny – cracking jokes about International Women’s Day. Did I mention that SF boasts a formidable female contingent, led by Adams’ deputy, the feisty Mary Lou McDonald? Anyway, he straddled both sides of the border easily, making it clear that the party still aspires to do away with that border: ‘Our flag is orange as well as green’. In fact, in talking up working class, non-sectarian solidarity in the north, he’s trying to recapture something of the spirit of the Sinn Féin in its original version.
The unsettling thing is that the mood of conference was upbeat, the delegates remarkably youthful and normal looking. Obviously the party is a basket case when it comes to economic credibility – its spending and tax commitments at this conference alone ought to make it unelectable – but in the present febrile mood in the Republic and the UK, you just can’t rule anything out. The election here is just weeks away but the Irish election isn’t for a year. By then the appeal of Sinn Féin as the Irish Syriza may have come unstuck, courtesy of events in Greece.
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