Sinn Féin ready for Coalition August 4, 2017
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
The Irish Times reports this morning that …
Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, Mary Lou McDonald, has rejected the prospect of the party supporting a minority government from the sidelines after the next general election and confirmed that it wants to be a full member of a coalition administration.
Previously they were ready to go into coalition as the Major Party. This will of course be manna from heaven for Fine Gael who will paint a picture of themselves against a possible FF/SF lash up, this despite the continued protestations of Micheál Martin that FF won’t go into government with SF.
SF probably feel too that their support is solid enough to go into government. I suppose too that there are issues such as housing that have to be tackled by Government but that aren’t being done at the minute.
Were they to go into Government it may well leave further room on their Left flank for the Left to grow.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Probably tactically necessary.
SF need to jump from their current stable-ish 20% to something closer to Fx and to do so they need to indicate that they are seriously open for government.
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Yes and in doing so they also damage FF , who will surely go in with them if the numbers are right.
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Exactly – the road to being the majority partner in a coalition is through being willing to risk becoming the minority partner.
Even with the present numbers a FF/SF coalition would see the minority partner with (I’m guessing here – perhaps someone will correct me) more power than any other minority partner in any RoI coalition government.
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But surely FF would not vote for a SF Taoiseach. Tanaiste, fine, but a SF Taoiseach is probably still way beyond the pale as far as they’re concerned.
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That’s true. But would that be less damaging that a coalition with a bigger FG?
Anyhow methinks we are getting ahead of ourselves.
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than
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Irish Times have been pushing this line morethen anyone even SF.
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Is anyone really surprised ? Really ?
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Following Labour and earlier Clann na Phoblachta. if not into oblivion, then into becoming a mildly radical alternative, if even that.
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Possibly. But not necessarily Jim. Times they are a changing. The chances for more substantially radical policies becoming mainstreamed has not been better for a few decades.
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In order to understand this move, you first need to recognise that under this leadership, SF has no fixed ideology. And in the end it’s always been about bums on seats at cabinet tables in Belfast and Dublin………
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That’s an interesting comment: “…has no fixed ideology.”
Probably overstepping the boundary or over-interpreting the comment but it seems to indicate or imply a party (party members) must have a “fixed” (concrete? unchangeable, determinant?) ideology and without it one mightn’t be taken seriously without said ideology.
Like I said probably over-interpreting the phrase.
OTOH, SF have hewed to a strict democratic policy since the peace process and their involvement in various elections post and previous to the process. Is democracy an ideology or merely a methodology?
[On another note, what exactly are the ideologies of the 3 other main parties: FF, FG and Labour? Of the three, I say FG comes closest to having a range of ideologies within some vaguely coherent orbit of capitalist politics. The other two, not so much or they hide behind nothingness in order to achieve the same goals as FG – i.e. comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicated.]
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by no fixed ideology i mean that SF will be left-wing when it suits, and right-wing/pro-business when it suits. it has been both at different times in the last 15-20 years in the South. They have no fixed beliefs and will adopt whatever position promises the most votes. That has been the track record. it is better to regard SF as a vote-gathering machine designed to achieve govt power rather than a party which wishes to implement a view of society by obtaining government power. as for your claim that ‘SF have hewed to a strict democratic policy since the peace process’, that is just not true. The IRA still exists, guns are still there, the capacity to kill and threaten still exists and is exercised, an intelligence dept bugs opponents, those who disagree with the party line are bullied out of the party and so on. it is why, i suspect micheal martin will not sup with them, because he believes that to go into govt with SF would be an invitation to SF to destabilise and eventually absorb FF. Go ask the SDLP how that feels…..Leo Varadkar may be a different matter and if i had the money i think i’d be inclined place a bet on an FG-SF coalition.
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My comment was more of a query (more a passing thought) about ideology in general. My SF reference to democracy was really just surmising about the nature of democracy in the modern world and one’s understanding of how it operates or fails to operate within idealogical frameworks.
The unsolicited and hyperbolic screed about your personal beliefs about SF fail to remotely touch on those issues.
good luck
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Then you should write with greater clarity……..
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Nice…and you have a good day too.
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Can tack left or right when it suits…
Has a history of political violence and the use of arms…
Has bugged and monitored political opponents and critics…
Sounds like SF and FF will get along just fine.
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“…vote-gathering machine designed to achieve govt power rather than a party which wishes to implement a view of society…”
Like the Green Party in Ireland over the same period? Or, you know, like every single party in western “democracy” for the last 25 years.
Keep on grinding that axe, you’ll b splitting quarks with it soon!
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I was talking to a good friend the other day who would be, shall we say, from a Republican strand that would be deeply sceptical of SF (and one that loathes WP), and we were talking about how it’s odd how people could start in one position in both of those and wind up miles away from that starting point. But his view of SF, is however much he dislikes where they now are, they are large and supported by multitudes and so on and that in away is its own justification for a lot of people. Doesn’t make them particularly left wing or not left wing (I’ve always had the view they’re social democrat in large part where that’s an issue with some left social democrats), but it does explain how people stay on board the project. I’ve another friend, one of my oldest who I’ve had from when I was in national school who would basically have stuck with Adams and McGuinness from the 80s on and essentially trusts them as Republicans. Same dynamic in a way.
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If SF’s positions were fixed there would be no peace process nor would they be sitting in the Dáil. Even if we limit ourselves to the post-GFA period, how unfixed have their positions been compared to the Greens or Labour?
While it’s a fair criticism it is true of every political party. To achieve merit SF would need to be guilty of an egregious violation of their stated positions. Otherwise it is just another squib in the fusillade SF experiences every single day.
I think it is an innate element of the western democratic dispensation that it co-opts all parties and elected representatives to a reactionary world view. Western policies since 1970 would indicate that the wishes of the vast majority of citizens of many countries have been ignored and policies that funnel money into fewer hands have been implemented.
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Bums on seats, yes, but has SF in recent years since the GFA sometimes tried to portray itself in the south as radical FF? Whatever that may mean in terms of changing politics. The only change I see coming is a big ho-hum by the electorate towards the traditional FF versus FG ballgame.
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and they have also portrayed themselves as pro-business when it suited. whatever gets most votes is all that matters.
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Wasn’t FF in its heyday an all-things-to-all party? ‘We are neither right nor left, but the party of reality’ was a mantra ascribed to Brian Lenihan (Snr) and lauded by John Healy in his Irish Times column in the 1960s & 70s.
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Very much so. I have heard the term ‘Perónist’ used to describe FF and it seems apt. A ‘third positionism’ which has a love affair with reconciling the classes and sections of society. A strong dash of authoritarianism and social conservatism can be discerned.
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The Catholic social thinking on distributionism had something to do with it. Smallholders with twenty acres of poorly drained land in peripheral areas were proud to look down on town labourers who paid rent on local authority houses. Farmers big and small were constantly told, especially during election campaigns, that they were ‘the backbone of the country’. Peron had a repressive army at his side; de Valera had a ‘respect authority’ ethos drilled into little boys and girls from infancy at his side. Where does authority come from nowadays?
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Though, to be fair, FF never recruited Nazi war criminals to the secret police! And “third positionism” is really a fancy name for fascism with a dash of socialism. Peron was also anti-clerical.
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Pretty hard to get Nazi war criminals over here when our competition was Buenos Aires, Rio De Janeiro, Bonn, Boston and Moscow. Look how hard it is to win a few bloody banks from London.
And “third positionism” is really a fancy name for fascism with a dash of socialism.
Third positionism is a deliberately vague ideology, like fascism. It seeks to uphold parts of the existing society (the family, masculinity, the propertied classes) whilst sacrificing others. A pragmatic conservatism, perhaps whete key elements are protected to the death whilst others are rabidly denounced.
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“An intelligence dept bugs opponents”.Why would they when you tape them for them via the fiasco of the Boston tapes!
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SF certainly havent been “coopted into a reactionary world view” when you see the stick they are taking from RTE and the usual suspects in Irish politics with regard to Venezuela.SF were there as “observers” and called the elections free and fair.
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Didn’t say they were.
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Jim Monaghan,
Are you not forgetting more recent direct comparators with a background in the Republican movement?
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1916 Societies
Thomas Ashe Centenary Commemoration.
Sun 24/09/2017 2 PM • Dublin Glasnevin • Dublin
Assemble GPO 2 pm
March To Glasnevin Cemetery
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