Irish unity : a dead duck for the foreseeable future

As anyone following the coverage on RTÉ will have seen, the result of Friday’s Irish election is now becoming clear with the country on course to re-elect a variant of the FF-FG coalition. As of Sunday evening, the consensus is settling on an FF-led coalition with FG, with a few independents making up the numbers.

While it will be a government dominated by the same parties, the dynamic will be different – FF’s parliamentary party seems to have more older and experienced hands than that of FG which has seen half of its TDs step down. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The word “interesting” could, however, hardly be said to apply to this election. I’ve never known an election to be so bereft of serious debate, so lacking in the cut-and-thrust, gaffes or spills. This was a campaign so low-key and lacklustre that you might be forgiven for not knowing it was happening. My theory about this is that most people felt that the result was a foregone conclusion. The government are perceived to be doing a good job, or at least, not a job so bad that people feel motivated to come and kick them out.

This is notable in its own right – Ireland seems likely to stand out as one of the few countries that has re-elected the administration that led it through the pandemic, and maintains a proud tradition of eschewing the temptation to turn to fascism and right-wing populism as is happening elsewhere in the democratic world. With that being said, those of us who wish to see Ireland continue to be a force for good in the world; a constructive international partner; a model for social co-operation, good government and effective democratic processes, even if these things are often executed imperfectly, should not rest on our laurels. There is much work to do especially around addressing housing shortages and dealing with social inequality.

But what does this result mean in the north ? The election seems relatively inconsequential for us here, apart from one major aspect : the status of Sinn Féin. How did they do ? What role will they play ? And what now for their single most important identifiable issue : Irish unity ?

The party’s “Director of Elections” Matt Carthy spent Friday evening talking up the exit poll result, and Mary Lou McDonald called it an “incredible” election with party spokespersons emphasising the likely growth in the number of seats. I don’t know if McDonald and Carthy are expecting their loyal supporters to blindly accept this reading, but if they are, they must be assuming they’ll swallow anything.

It would have been hard for the party not to at least hold their seats in the face of a falling vote given the over-nomination in 2020 and the boundary changes/additional seats. But the party’s vote share fell by 5.5 points, the greatest fall of any party contesting the election. McDonald knows this, as her own Dublin Central seat fell from 35.7% to 23.3% and the poor showing for her running mate suggests the party must have acted desperately to shore up her vote. Similar trends are apparent in other seats contested by leading figures; in the border county of Louth, once represented by Gerry Adams, the party fell from 42% to 26% and there is a small chance that they could lose one of their two seats. The Donegal vote seems to have held up, but Dublin Mid West took a hit – despite Eoin Ó Broin and his running mate being comfortably elected, they took a 9.5% haircut. Dublin South Central bucked the trend – despite a fall in the vote, a second SF TD was elected there alongside party stalwart Aengus Ó Snodaigh.

SF’s opinion poll picture has been characterised by volatility. During 2022, when SF were sustaining over 35% in the polls, the question seemed not whether they would lead the next government, but whether or not it would even need the support of a junior coalition partner to do so. It’s not immediately obvious what set off the decline from the 2022 peak. The party seemed to fumble the issue of immigration-related riots, and it faced a number of scandals which some activists fantastically seemed to believe were the product of a media conspiracy. However, I think it’s more likely that the party’s polling fell back simply because, as the election came into view, voters saw little need to swap the government for an unknown quantity.

All of this supports the conclusion that, despite superlatives emanating from the party leadership, the party now has a consistent track record of missing the target. It couldn’t exploit the economic circumstances following the 2008 financial crash. It failed to persuade voters that it had a viable alternative to the FG-led austerity measures in 2016 and 2020. And now in 2024 despite deep disquiet over housing and social inequality, it has failed once again to adapt to circumstances.

Alongside the electoral and polling failures, there are failures on policy. In spite of priding itself on being an all-island movement, this party has completely failed to get Northern issues on the agenda at this election. Its proposals to set up a government department with its own minister to pursue reunification, and to petition the UK Prime Minister for a border poll, appear not to have grabbed the enthusiasm of voters. I saw no serious talk about Northern participation in southern elections, or ongoing issues such as the frustrations around accessing GAA games on streaming services. I heard some examples of party supporters trying to bait the other parties over their inaction on this issue but they could not land a punch.

One major downside of the all-island scope of the party made itself felt during the series of scandals that dogged it during the course of the summer. I am not convinced that these scandals were directly responsible for the party’s poor result, but they will have been an unhelpful and unpleasant distraction. With the exception of the Brian Stanley matter, all of the other problems emanated from the North with the southern party being dragged into responding to them. Southern activists may begin to resent the fact that their chief spokesperson, the party President, is having to clean up Northern messes and that their Senate group seems to be used as a dumping ground for northern ex-representatives, not least that two of them have now had to resign on the back of scandal. It is hard to imagine that this state of affairs is not causing frustration.

The predictions of SF and a quorum of their more breathless supporters within the commentariat that a McDonald ministry would immediately lead to a border poll and a national debate are now looking rather silly. Far from being inevitable, the issue of Irish unity is now a dead duck. When we look into the future, which looks like the UK government seeking rapprochement with Europe against a backdrop of a global recession combined with political instability within major Western countries including the United States, I struggle to see an opportunity for reunification to be reintroduced to the agenda for the foreseeable future.

This means we’ll see the northern-dominated astroturf “civic nationalist” groups, which offer substance-free promotion of the SF party line on Irish unity, wither on the vine. They’ve been conspicuously quiet since the summer, which is not a surprise given how hard it is to sustain talking points around the supposed unstoppable momentum of Irish unity when Irish people on either side of the border consistently show no interest in talking about it during elections. Just as Sinn Féin keeps missing its shot, nationalism at large has squandered the chance to reunify Ireland on the back of the brexit referendum.

Taking all of these issues together, it is hard to see how SF avoids going into a period of soul-searching, possibly including a leadership contest, which could distract them from their role jointly leading the devolved government in the North. The party’s ruling council has clearly had to wrestle with internal criticism, which until now has only publicly surfaced in the form of John O’Dowd’s attempt to challenge Michelle O’Neill for the role of vice president. More recently, disaffected party figures, mostly west of the Bann, have attempted to embarrass the First Minister over her attendance at a Remembrance Day event in Enniskillen. It seems unlikely that these groups will stay quiet about the party’s failures in the southern arena – failure to get into government; failure to progress Irish unity; failure to advance cross border causes.

SF are the comeback kid of Irish politics. They’ve a habit, after each stumble, of bouncing back stronger than they were before. Most other parties can only dream of the kind of enthusiastic activist base that SF are able to bring to bear each time there is an election. But there’s only so long you can string supporters along with promises of total victory around the corner. Everyone has their breaking point; could SF be about to find theirs ?