“Is abstention from Westminster now an end in itself?”
With an abstentionist Sinn Féin irrelevant to the number crunching at Westminster it’s interesting to see Gearóid Ó Cairealláin, in the North Belfast News, musing aloud about the “elephant in the room”. At his Irish Central website, Niall O’Dowd argues that “The time is now to take that step” [end Sinn Féin’s abstentionism] – although he mistakenly believes that “the Sinn Fein party is abstaining because of the oath of loyalty to the Queen”. As Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams stated …