What on earth is Sinn Féin up to in the presidential election?
It has been dithering for months. The party’s explanation is that it’s been “consulting with the membership”. Come off it. How long does that take? What are they doing, sending messages to each other by carrier pigeon? When the Sinn Féin leadership wants to, it can move a lot more quickly than this.
Actually it seems the main consultation process was Mary Lou McDonald consulting with herself. Earlier this year, she ruled it out. Then at the start of the summer she sort-of ruled it in. Last Monday morning, perhaps fearful that the will-she/won’t-she question would overshadow the party’s think-in, McDonald told the morning radio shows that no, she would not be the candidate.
So then who? Don’t be getting ahead of yourselves. The party’s ruling ardchomhairle (in fact, like all parties, actual decisions are made by a much smaller group) would meet a fortnight later, McDonald said. She hopes to have a candidate chosen by September 20th.
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The name of Mayo TD Rose Conway-Walsh has been bounced around. But she doesn’t want to. Or Pearse Doherty, the combative finance spokesman. Pearse is a big beast in the political jungle and has many qualities – but his best friends wouldn’t describe him as a unifying figure. Others say First Minister Michelle O’Neill could step aside from that role for a tilt at the Áras. That would be an extraordinary signal about how seriously the party takes its responsibility to govern Northern Ireland. And even if they thought it was a good idea, the path from northern prominence to southern success is not always straightforward, as Michelle Gildernew’s flop in last year’s European elections demonstrates. As some Northern nationalists are fond of pointing out, partitionist thinking is common in the South.
But wait. As McDonald made clear on Monday – and there was, observers say, a growing sense of this at the think-in – the party might yet back Catherine Connolly. It looks like they are very much in hunt for the least bad option.
The language used by McDonald in her Morning Ireland interview was revealing. Discussing the presidency with Mary Wilson, McDonald used the first person pronoun (I, me, my) 32 times. This was a decision that she was framing very much as a personal choice of hers, not a decision of the party’s “collective leadership”.
“I’ve considered very carefully what we do as a party but also what I do personally,” she said. “I’ve informed some of my colleagues over the weekend ... my name will not go forward.”
I dwell on this because there are strong indications that McDonald was under some pressure from within the party, especially in Belfast, to run.
Here’s what the Andersonstown News – widely thought to be familiar with the thinking of Belfast Sinn Féin – said in a recent editorial: “The political Pooh-Bahs in Leinster House are sweating profusely this week, and not because a heatwave is on the way but rather because a certain Mary Lou McDonald is pondering a run at the Áras ... We think she certainly should throw her hat in the ring.”
(The paper also reckoned that “President McDonald would give Irish reunification the rocket fuel needed to propel it over the line”; we’ll come back to that.)
Some of her colleagues in Leinster House were of a similar view. If we are going to run a candidate, one mused, surely we should run our best candidate?
Others thought it was a mad idea – not least because it would suggest that the party was giving up on the idea of McDonald winning the next election and leading a left-wing government. Next question: who’s the next leader? But the fact it was being openly canvassed tells you something about the state of mind in the party.
My hunch is that all this isn’t just a combination of visible developments with unlikely explanations. Rather, it suggests that Sinn Féin uncertainty about the presidential election reflects a wider uncertainty over its future direction, strategy, positioning and leadership.
Does the party need to change its approach, or does it keep doing what it has been doing for the last two election cycles?
Recently, the Belfast journalist Sam McBride reported that the new general secretary, northerner Sam Baker, has told senior party members that Sinn Féin should embrace the history of the IRA’s armed struggle, rather than seek to distance itself from it. Baker is the third of three Belfast heavyweights, along with Conor Murphy and adviser Stephen McGlade, to come south in the last 12 months, during what has been a difficult time for the party.
Questions about the leadership of any party are, in that context, hardly unusual. But they are unusual in Sinn Féin. Running McDonald for the presidency would have been perhaps a way of easing her out. But the lady’s not for turning.
Instead, there seems to be a renewed focus on a united Ireland. In that interview on Monday, McDonald said that the next president would likely be in office “as we move into referendums”.
Really? The UK government doesn’t want a referendum. The Irish Government doesn’t want a referendum. There isn’t a majority for unity in the North. How exactly is a referendum going to magically appear?
Sinn Féin’s leadership knows all this: they’re not stupid people. Maybe the real problem is that the path to power for Sinn Féin – which seemed to many people inevitable in the years 2020-24, either leading a left-wing government or with Fianna Fáil – now looks, well, not at all inevitable. Given the political reverses of the last year or so, it would be odd if Sinn Féin wasn’t questioning its future, its strategy and its leadership.
