Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Why we should welcome a Sinn Fein government

There are those – most of my acquaintance in Ireland, frankly – who can think of nothing worse than Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald as leader of the next Irish government. She’s embracing the prospect; in a walkabout in Dublin’s fruit and veg market in Moore Street, she said, as you’d expect, ‘I may well be the next Taoiseach, yes’. And yep, it would be a disaster for Britain when it comes to the Brexit negotiations. But I think that, actually, it might be the best outcome from this election which has resulted in Sinn Fein effectively level pegging with Fianna Fail in terms of seats (one FF representative is Speaker, and so out of active duty). It would have done even better if it had run candidates in every seat.

Because it is only if the electorate is obliged to come to terms with the reality of Sinn Fein that the party can be seen off in the long term. Sinn Fein is a funny amalgam of fantasy economics and old fashioned republicanism allied to really irritating contemporary wokery. It is, in British terms, Corbynist economics, Momentum youthfulness, and the communications skills of Nicola Sturgeon.

The truth is, for the young people who voted for Sinn Fein, the Troubles aren’t just a distant memory – they’re not a memory at all

Though none of those comparisons quite does justice to the additional element that Sinn Fein brings to the party, which is the blood on its hands from the Troubles. It is that which makes Micheal Martin, the Fianna Fail leader, swallow hard at the prospect of doing any kind of deal with them. During the campaign, though not after the election, Martin spoke of the moral problem that Sinn Fein presented, namely, the unfinished business of its association with Republican violence.

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