Long past time the SDLP tried a different approach to Northern Ireland?

There will be many objections to Colum Eastwood’s policy arrangement with Fianna Fáil. Much of it genuine and heartfelt, some of it with more than a kernel of wise caution about where things could lead in four or five years time.

But, for my money, the greatest enemy going forward is the SDLP itself. Its founding members asked no permission from anyone to go their own way or to go out of their way make trouble for the greater good (or indeed to make its own mistakes).

Any party which (under five separate leaders) suffers a 46% decline and doesn’t think it is undergoing a deep existential crisis, is clearly doing something very wrong. Maybe that’s because in its first thirty years it had no serious rival within nationalism?

For the first time in seventeen years of writing Slugger, I’m delighted to have had an op-ed accepted in the Irish News, which makes this point:

Harold Wilson once said of the Labour Party that it was either a moral crusade or it was nothing. The SDLP has to stand for something more than the endless streams of lukewarm waffle that has baffled and bewildered even those who still loyally turn out to vote for it.

In the parable of the talents, the SDLP are the ones who took the talent they were given and buried it in the ground. An all-pervading fear of a diminishing future has seen the party’s fortunes decline to the point where it holds no seats in west Belfast, where once it had an MP. [Emphasis added]

Lyndon B Johnson was once asked what was needed to develop a successful political campaign. He answered, “everything”. Whatever the misgivings of some about Fianna Fáil, surely it is long past time that the SDLP tried doing something different?

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty