So just when will SF be allowed to participate in government in the South?

An Irish Times podcast [Whats at Stake in #GE2020 – available on iTunes etc] with Fintan O’Toole and Pat Leahy where O’Toole looked at the broad political context of the election, and mighty intriguing it was too. Intriguing not because of the usual complaints of clientelism which we’ve heard before, but rather because O’Toole raised a basic question.

At what point is this polity going to accept Sinn Féin’s bona fides. And he pointed up the absurd paradox whereby two national governments and various parties therein strained every sinew to demand, indeed argue strenuously, that it was Sinn Féin’s duty to go into government in Northern Ireland, but when it comes to the Republic seemingly neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fáil will accept their democratic legitimacy.

And he noted this wasn’t about policy, so what was it about?

You can’t keep saying… you can say it’s their policies, though that’s never been an issue in Irish coalition building… it’s being used as an excuse because people don’t accept their legitimacy.

Pat Leahy was like a man stung, racing in with

We don’t know who the real leadership of SF is…the lie that Gerry Adams was never a member of the IRA was something everyone had to pay obeisance to…

In passing I find this a ridiculous argument (aired again only this last weekend by Eoghan Harris of all people). Anyone with even the faintest knowledge of political parties will know that there are inner groups, whether councils or advisors or bureaucracies which exert considerable influence over the direction of them. Sometimes, as with the further left parties, that’s quite organised, in other instances these develop or exist. Anyone who thinks that FF or FG policy is driven by TDs and Senators and members alone is remarkably naive (and even in terms of leaderships these are internal, not external, processes). The odd thing is we have a pretty good idea of the broad coalition of forces that SF represents, between the leadership, those who have been long involved in the movement, members and so on. It’s far from perfect, nothing is, but nor is it more anomalous than the history of the party and movement would suggest.

Hugh Linehan made then point that FG wouldn’t go into power with the then WP…

…since it was only twenty years since they’d been engaged in active terrorist acts, questions over their democratic structures and so on…but within a few years it was in government [with WP people].

Granted under a different name, but one wonders if a ‘reconstituted’ WP, of the sort envisaged by the parliamentarians wouldn’t have done the trick, if not in the mid 1990s then a little later.

Leahy then argued that the entire history of Irish politics has been of people and parties doing things they would never do and “…that time will come with SF. My view is it won’t come after this election.”.

The numbers?

No, the numbers are perfect for SF and FF. I don’t think it will happen.

What about FG?

The reaction amongst FG party would be even more virulently negative.

But it will come within an election or two.

As O’Toole said, ‘lets be honest with the electorate. In terms of government formation your vote doesn’t matter.’

And that’s it. For SF the waiting must continue. Is it a case of this generation must retire? Martin Ferris and Gerry Adams are not contesting their seats. I don’t know if Dessie Ellis will be. But that – naturally – will mean a changing of the guard. Perhaps that will be sufficient for FF and FG. Perhaps not. Whatever, as O’Toole notes, this provides a weird block on Irish politics and a quarter of a century or near enough after the conflict was brought to a close.

I don’t often find myself on the same page as O’Toole but this time, surely.