In a world in which this last week has seen the terrorist outrages in Spain, the departure of Steve Bannon as Trump’s strategy advisor, the flip-flopping of Trump on whether American neo-Nazis are to be condemned, the temporary cessation of Kim Jong Un’s plan to fire ICBMs at the seas surrounding Guam, the almost-instant collapse in popular support for Emmanuel Macron, and the exposure of the UK Tory government as naïve and clueless on the post-Brexit implications for the Irish border, it might seem a little petty or introverted to lift the carpet and closely examine the possibility that Sinn Féin is edging closer to participation in a coalition government here after the next election.
But the prospect of a FF-SF coalition is now being considered by a number of FF frontbenchers if this week’s news reports are to be believed. This reported development is probably unwelcome news for Micheál Martin who has, until now, consistently rejected the idea of coalition with Sinn Féin out of hand.
But there are two identifiable strands to Fianna Fáil – one is urban, middle of the road, pro-business while the other hankers after the radicalism of Dev’s pre-war politics. These two strands have been held together by the party’s sense of loyalty and self-image as a single, continuous national movement.
While FF rural traditionalists might see an alliance with Sinn Féin as the healing of an old rupture in republicanism and a mathematically realistic path for re-entry into government, the urban, pro-business wing of the party can only see a collapse in middle class electoral support in such a scenario.
Micheál Martin knows that any chance of FF overhauling FG in the cities and becoming the dominant party of the middle class would be ended by a whiff of suspicion that Gerry Adams and his colleagues would devise the next programme for government.
Both strands are resolutely opposed to coalition with Fine Gael – especially such a coalition under a FG Taoiseach. The latter scenario would, they believe, utterly destroy the party and see it being supplanted by Sinn Féin. Some of them fear a FF-led grand coalition almost as much, thinking that FF would be the ultimate losers if Sinn Féin became the major opposition party
Having stayed out of a grand coalition, most FF deputies now want to put their posteriors on seats at the cabinet table, the chairs of Oireachtas committees and the back seats of ministerial cars. They want a more direct say in how Ireland is governed. They see themselves as a “natural party of government”.
Above all, Fianna Fáil do not want to be in opposition for a third consecutive term. And if avoiding that entails coalition with Sinn Féin, then so be it. Hold your nose and take the plunge. So much the better if Gerry Adams stands down in the meantime. And if Micheál Martin has to go as the price of such a deal, well that price may have to be paid as well. Three terms in opposition is too much to accept. And handing the republican mantle to Sinn Féin is simply a form of political suicide.
Some readers may take the view that the foregoing analysis simply means that middle Ireland will be forced to re-elect Fine Gael to lead a disparate coalition based on a constellation of independent groupings and micr-parties. That is what FG strategists are hoping for. But things are not that simple.
Leo Varadkar will publicly keep the door open to a grand coalition with FF. But if he is asked whether he will bring FG into such a coalition as the smaller partner, he will have to say “no”. To make such a concession before polling day could deflate the FG campaign and become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
And so the problem with either scenario – governments led by FG or FF without participation by the other – is that Ireland will be governed by a coalition in which the hard left tail wags the centrist dog. The availability of non-ideological independents to make up the number will no not survive into the next Dáil if polls are to be believed.
Middle Ireland does not want to be governed by the policy demands of the hard left. But if the two largest parties for which middle Ireland votes – Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – are dead set on not coalescing with each other, no other outcome seems possible.
Middle Ireland is, in international terms, centre-right. It has created a political order in which its policy goals are frustrated by the FF-FG “non-cooperation pact”. We have a stalemate in which normal democratic choices for government are effectively denied to the electorate. Short-termism has been enthroned as a paralytic normal. Even the “permanent government” of civil servants has been largely stymied by the icy grip of the “new politics” on the legislative process.
So what is wrong with Sinn Féin entering government here the next time? There are many reasons why it would be wrong.
Sinn Féin, firstly, is not a normal democratic party. It is under the thumb of the old Belfast Brigade who decide everything and control everything through a network of provo cadres and commissars liberally sprinkled though the party at every strategic point.
Sinn Féin does not accept the legitimacy of the State or its institutions. It still lives in a parallel universe in which the last legitimate Dáil was elected in 1920 and in which the powers of Republic were vested in the Army Council of the IRA by members of that Dáil in the 1930s.
Sinn Féin’s ruling elite subscribe to a Marxist world view in which Raul Castro and Nicolas Maduro are their poser-boys.
Their economic outlook would destroy Ireland’s prospects as a small open economy in which foreign investment is welcomed.
Their Northern policy is confrontational and incompatible with reconciliation between Orange and Green.
Their taxation policies would cripple the private sector in Ireland and end our attractiveness as a place to do international business.
They are intent on mopping up the remains of the Labour Party in their remaining vulnerable seats.
These considerations might cause some in middle Ireland to ask themselves whether it would make more sense to elect thirty or forty TDs to the next Dáil who were collectively committed to breaking the stalemate imposed on us by the narrow self-preservation priorities of the old war-horse parties that have betrayed the interests of middle Ireland, and who collectively committed to forming a coalition with one or both of those parties to restore the capacity of the majority to govern this state in an effective way.
If one in five or one in six voters saw their way to supporting such candidates, each constituency would send a deputy to Dáil Éireann guaranteeing the end of the politics of paralysis. Middle Ireland needs hope. Young Ireland needs a plan for the future. Even the support of one in eight or one in ten voters for such candidates would end the stalemate.
The great symbol of the “new politics” must be the Irish Water saga which will see those of us who paid our lawful debts being reimbursed while Drogheda went dry
What is going on in Irish politics is not sustainable. We deserve better. If the outcome is not to be the entry into government of Sinn Féin, an undemocratic, marxist party which contests the legitimacy of the very state itself, middle Ireland has to end the stalemate in our politics.