It is hard to know who looked more foolish after their recent joint outing to the London financial world – Davy stockbrokers or Sinn Féin. It seems that the main achievement of their excursion has been to tarnish the credibility of both with the people they rely on for support. Davy, the main stockbroker for the Government, surprised many in the political and business worlds by effectively giving their imprimatur to Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman, Pearse Doherty, as he sought to reassure London’s financial institutions that deep down his party is actually pro-business.
It is not so long ago that Sinn Féin denounced Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens for saving the Irish banking system from collapse. The party fought vigorously against the measures enacted by successive governments to rescue the undeserving banks in order to protect the Irish people from an even bigger disaster. The fact that Davy is now owned by Bank of Ireland, which needed a large injection of taxpayers’ money to survive, only adds to the sense of betrayal felt by those in the mainstream parties who took a huge political hit for saving the banks from collapse.
“Given what we had to do to rescue the banks in the teeth of bitter opposition from Sinn Féin I am simply disgusted at the way Davy have behaved,” one senior Government figure told me. His views are widely shared on the Government benches. This may well come back to bite Davy at some future date if its new friends don’t make it into power.
During the Davy/Sinn Féin jaunt to London, Doherty assured investors that his party would not attempt to upend the Irish economic model and that the party’s policy of introducing a wealth tax of 1 per cent on net assets greater than €1 million would be assessed by an expert taxation group to establish its effectiveness.
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Of course what neither Sinn Féin nor Davy told the money men in London was that Sinn Féin policy will not be exclusively decided by the party’s representatives in the Dáil but by a group of unelected figures, mainly based in Belfast, who are the real power in the party
In a briefing note for investors after the meetings, Davy gushed that Sinn Féin is “more New Labour than Corbyn Labour”. Leaving aside the oddness of this assessment given that Corbyn has been such an ally of Sinn Féin during his entire political career, the deeper question is how the stockbroker can possibly know how Sinn Féin will behave in office.
For a start the party has U-turned on issue after issue in recent months, from immigration and the family and the care referendums to economic policy, so there is no knowing how it would actually behave in office.
The stockbrokers may have been given a clue on this front by Doherty’s assurance to the representative of high finance in London that the party “fully endorses” the Government’s new Future Ireland Fund which is designed to provide a revenue stream to deal with future challenges ranging from climate change to deglobalisation. However, on his return to Dublin, Doherty and Sinn Féin had no problem attacking the measure in the Dáil and voting against the legislation to establish the fund. “Looks like Davy stockbrokers might have to rewrite their report on their London SF gig,” remarked Labour Party finance spokesman Ged Nash.
Of course what neither Sinn Féin nor Davy told the money men in London was that Sinn Féin policy will not be exclusively decided by the party’s representatives in the Dáil but by a group of unelected figures, mainly based in Belfast, who are the real power in the party.
The public inquiry into the response to Covid in Northern Ireland recently provided an inkling of how Sinn Féin might behave in government in Dublin. It emerged during the cross-examination of First Minister Michelle O’Neill that she had consciously and deliberately deleted every message from her work phone, her personal phone and her iPad. She did this despite being warned by the head of the civil service to retain any evidence relevant to the inquiry and despite being given clear written legal advice to retain WhatsApp and text messages. Two other Sinn Féin ministers also managed to delete their text messages. One conclusion is that they were acting under orders from west Belfast.
Voters in the Republic would do well to remember when they go to the polls in the next general election that if they vote Sinn Féin they will be handing over the future of their State to a party cabal who will instruct the party’s TDs about what to do in government. The other side of Sinn Féin’s attempt to woo the London financial world is that it seems to have added to their woes with rank-and-file supporters who, like Davy, may be prepared to take the newfound pro-business rhetoric at face value. As far as its core supporters are concerned Sinn Féin in office is going to take radical steps to dismantle the current social order – not prop it up with cosmetic changes.