Election 2024: Sinn Féin should take lessons from Fianna Fáil on what civic republicanism can do…

If I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.

James, Sit Down

After years of enduring glad handed propaganda about how well the Republic is doing (and economically it is)  the testimonials of real people during the last three weeks of the election campaign show the depth of misery that many are currently enduring.

Housing was the key issue in the 2020 election and it remains a huge issue, but it’s clear from various polls and many anecdotes collected by journalists and politicians that it is the cost of living that is blotting out the sun for the largest number of electors.

Fiscally sensitive critics point to a giveaway budget and warn about the narrowness of the tax base but much of it comprises a multitude of small measures (some temporary, others not) without which this government might go the same way Kamala did.

The outgoing administration is attempting to buck the anti incumbency trend this year. Part of the question to be resolved tomorrow is whether a government can respond to a cost of living crisis within an economic boom and live to tell the tale.

That’s a non trivial issue. It’s not as though there is no anger, in fact there’s plenty. But the second part of the question is whether under Ireland’s increasingly fragmented electoral system people feel they have a clear alternative to vote for?

Ten days ago Bertie Ahern (a veteran of coalition building) noted on the Indo Daily podcast how the fragmentation of the parties of the centre left means that after the election they’re unlikely to have enough seats to have substantial impact.

He also correctly predicted that the strength of the three main parties would be roughly equal in percentages at 20/20/20. That’s a good four points below what they achieved in 2020 for all of them. Hardly a ringing endorsement of any of them.

Interestingly when Ireland Thinks ran a question past their panel identifying which of their local candidates (rather than party) they would vote for, both Fine Gael and Sinn Fein under polled their national reading, and Fianna Fáil over polled by a few points.

None of which is good news for Sinn Féin, who had hoped to reshape the battlefield between 2020 and now. It would take a shock of epic proportions for them to pull off the kind of coup that’s needed to out perform a coalition currently twice its size.

Thinking primarily about the campaign rather than the run up to it, they’ve two weaknesses they brought into the contest themselves: one the technical nature of the debate over housing has frozen the public out; and two, poor media relations.

In The Examiner Dr Mick Byrne explains why the differences of opinion aren’t as vast across party divides as it may appear:

What used to divide parties of left and right was the role of public housing. The right traditionally believed the market could provide almost all housing because it was more efficient, fairer, and cheaper for Government.

In contrast, the left argued that a large public or ‘non-market’ sector is needed to balance the problems of unaffordability that can plague market housing, and ensure working and middle-income households have secure homes.

The intensity, and intractability, of the housing crisis has pushed the whole debate very much to the left, blurring the difference between Government and opposition.

The actual key difference is not on how you build houses (which Sinn Féin has used the planning process to hold up new schemes in areas of great housing need like O’Devany Gardens) but over how the private rental sector is to be regulated.

The truth is that the long prohibition on building public housing in Ireland is over, leaving Sinn Féin with little free ground upon which to fight the government parties. And they’ve already nicked some of their good stuff like the “renters tax credit”.

The other problem is that the media, which stood back in awe of Mary Lou McDonald when she administered her back of hand to Tweedledum and Tweedledee with some considerable aplomb in 2020 seems to have got much tougher with them this time.

Multiple legal actions against individual journalists as well as their institutions won’t have helped. But the party crossed the line when it talked about launching an inquiry into RTÉ’s coverage of Gaza for reasons McDonald has never seemed able to answer.

It’s hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that it simply wasn’t her idea. There are some in the party’s leadership who seem to the think the world everywhere is as tractable to pressure as their strongholds in north and west Belfast or Derry. It isn’t lads.

The other problem they have is, as that in any war, your enemy has a say too. Running the same battle plan they did in 2020 has given their opponents in government plenty of time not simply to defend but to recast the field on which it has had to fight.

In Micheál Martin they have an opponent of focus, patience and determination. Despite contrary claims from McDonald the past militarism of her movement stayed largely in the past. Martin’s attacks were anchored in policy and the here and now.

As Gerald Howlin (a former FF SpAd but certainly no fan of Martin’s) noted on Morning Ireland yesterday that by dint of the fact that Martin had no troubles either coming into and during the campaign he has had the best campaign of the three.

To leave it there would be to damn him with faint praise. The stability of the coalition and the way the PfG was put together taking government for the first time in many years to the left on social policy owes much to Martin’s civility and patience.

In taking on Housing, Health and Education FF took an activist approach. Even though in all three areas their problems are far from over, they now have a modest record of delivery that meshes with Green achievements like the Local Link bus services.

Simon Harris was left a tough legacy by his predecessor Leo Varadkar, not least because eighteen of his party’s TDs have stepped down. Whatever happens tomorrow (and not withstanding his blow out at Kanturk) Fine Gael owe him hugely.

Regardless of what happens tomorrow, this campaign has clarified some things that will stay clarified regardless of the outcome. And on Northern Ireland there’s only one southern party with a serious approach to the future, and it’s not SF.

For another thing it has brought out of Martin in particular is a stout defence of the civic republicanism that has transformed the south from the agrarian backwater it was at independence to the modern forward looking state it is today.

Given widespread dissatisfaction, anywhere else and the government would be gone. That that’s unlikely may relate to apathy bred by a cynicism towards politicians and even democracy itself. But also because SF has not provided a believable alternative.

It spent the last term channeling anger (one reason Doherty would be a poor substitute for McDonald) rather than figuring credible answers to people’s problems and building compliances with others it could coalesce with once the election is over.

Gaining power in the south relies on building a broad consensus (which is why everyone’s housing policies look so alike), unlike the south where holding onto office and ministerial salaries the culture is to destroy any form of cooperation before it starts.

That said, the Irish Times poll figured the undecideds at fully 19% of the population. We could be in for a few shocks yet. If you have one, get out and vote tomorrow, whomever it is for. And get out and vote whatever the weather.