That SF vote…

Matt Cooper in the SBP during the campaign asked an interesting question, what if people don’t care about what he terms ’SF’s violent past’? He tried to contextualise this with FF’s problems in relation to Ahern and dig-outs, and noted that for all that ‘it did not inhibit his return to power in 2007’.

And now we see with the more than partial rehabilitation of FF – and I am very much looking forward to seeing the overall vote share, well not very much looking forward, indeed not at all, but I’m curious – that the past and the present can be two very different places politically.

And he argues:

‘The ’Slab’ Murphy connection has some potential to damage SF in the coming weeks, most especially when he is sentence but the Central Criminal Court on February 26, election day.

Or will it? Is it possible that the portion of the electorate already inclined towards voting for SF simply won’t care, regarding it all as irrelevant to the issues about which they care?’

I’m tending to the view that most of those who will vote for SF will do so regardless, and those who won’t won’t. I think there’s a softer ground out there of people who will be more rather than less likely to vote SF once Adams takes a less prominent role, but that softer ground is of variable and difficult to determine expanse and therefore as it stands it may not be hugely to the party’s benefit to bid him farewell just yet.

But it is clear that even though it is now moving towards a quarter of a century since the cessations there is no will to shift too far beyond a discourse in relation to SF which is one typified by hostility. I was surprised how Adams on the TV3 debate didn’t push back more strongly against M. Martin’s line on knee-cappings and so on, not least by pointing out that it was Martin’s own government and own former leader, which forged ahead with talks that brought about a situation where such events are now in the past, and that he himself and others with FF and others had taken considerable steps precisely in order to ensure that. It would also have been handy to make the point that some sort of post-conflict commission was a necessity precisely to engage with this and give people their voice.

Again, the polls do not suggest that the debate changed things an iota (or if they did it was perhaps to afford SF slightly greater support). The decline in the SF vote during the campaign I’d hazard was more about the softness of the headline vote and a retreat to a core. But a core that has put on considerable percentage points since 2011.