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Just a few years after Sinn Féin, which supports Irish unity, shed its image as a political pariah and burst into the political mainstream, party leader Mary Lou MacDonald has announced that the implementation could take place this autumn. They are trying to seize power through a general election with a high degree of gender.
Sinn Féin, once shunned as the mouthpiece of the Irish Republican militia, has become Ireland’s most popular political party. This is largely thanks to Mr Macdonald and his focus on solving the chronic housing crisis rather than the party’s core promise of reunifying the island after a century of partition. .
“What would a Sinn Féin government do?” she told the Financial Times ahead of elections expected this year. “We will build a house.”
The country’s two traditional parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, currently in government in coalition with the Greens, are preaching security in continuity. McDonald suggests the opposite.
“The danger to Ireland remains the same,” she says. “Inertia is dangerous.”
Macdonald, 54, is a charismatic and skilled orator untainted by his links to the IRA in the Northern Ireland conflict. Dublin’s middle classes are steering traditional left-wing parties towards the political center and courting businessmen to widen their appeal.
In the 2019 local and European elections, the country had a disastrous result, losing half of its parliamentary seats and two of its three members, but in the 2020 general election it made a historic breakthrough, coming in second place with a difference of one seat. accomplished.
Since then, Sinn Féin has consistently ranked first in opinion polls and has the greatest support across Ireland among all age groups except those over 65. The party is also currently the largest party in Northern Ireland. In the 2022 Northern Ireland election, Sinn Féin won the most seats in Belfast’s Stormont Assembly, making it the first time an Irish nationalist party has won the most seats.
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But distrust runs deep. Sinn Féin is struggling to expand its footprint in the Republic of Ireland beyond about a third of the electorate. For some businesses and voters, the prospect of a Taoiseach from a party closely associated with three decades of violence in Northern Ireland is too much to bear.
Some are disgusted by the party’s insistence on secrecy and its tendency to seek legal action against critical voices in the media.
Sinn Féin has recently hit a speed bump. The Irish Poll Index, compiled by Leiden University and UCD in Dublin, shows it remains ahead of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, but has lost momentum from July 2022 onwards.
He bet on a vote of no confidence in the justice minister following the riots in Dublin caused by far-right activists last November. Sinn Féin was defeated, and in response to the vote, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s party Fine Gael launched a five-minute program highlighting Sinn Féin’s alleged “criminal links” on the basis of Mr Macdonald’s disqualification as prime minister. The video was aired.
A video showed her with a former Sinn Féin councilor who was convicted of aiding and abetting a gangland murder in Dublin. McDonald was unfazed.
“I would like to believe that people are doing more ‘policing.'” [common sense] I would rather my voting intentions be shaped by such cheap hits,” she said in her office, where a large Irish tricolor flag is displayed in the Dáil of the Irish Parliament.
In the coming months, the party will step up efforts to win over skeptics. Mr MacDonald said: “I am very conscious that even those who do not vote for Sinn Féin, at least they need to feel that we have confidence and that we have a responsibility.” Ta.
Opinion polls suggest that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael together could still win more votes than Sinn Féin. However, many young voters feel that traditional parties are complacent. Fine Gael has been in government since 2011.
“It’s the best option… because a transformational government will be the first in our history without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael,” Mr McDonald said.
“But I also said: . . . when the votes are counted. . . . I’m going to go and talk to everyone because that’s the democratic thing.”
A united Ireland remains the party’s raison d’être. Just over a century after partition in 1921, Sinn Féin wants to reframe the issue as “all about opportunity” and push for a vote on the issue within 10 years.
Opinion polls show that a majority of Irish people want to unify, while a majority of people in Northern Ireland still want to remain in the UK. McDonald’s is undaunted. Dublin must insist on unity and, above all, begin preparations to articulate “big economic wins”.
“It’s not a matter of winners and losers,” she said, insisting we needed to start planning for an “orderly, democratic and peaceful” transition to a new Ireland that welcomed pro-British trade unionists. did. However, she says that simply “forcing” Northern Ireland would be “a really, really missed opportunity”.
She envisioned a joint health service inspired by Britain’s NHS, but ruled out changing the Irish flag or moving the capital from Dublin. Ms McDonald also said she would not resign unless she won the Irish general election.
However, with Ireland’s treasury full of huge corporate tax revenues, it is “not a bleak prospect” that her manifesto will become a reality if she leads the next government.
“We’re talking about a changing environment where there are a lot of resources for the state to deploy,” McDonald said.
But first of all, “Our job is to persuade people to…”. . Reject a scenario where an entire generation is locked out of homeownership and rents become sky-high. . . Trust us as agents of change. ”