Sinn Fein and how do they form a government dilemma

You are singing the praises of a party that drove us off a financial cliff and got rehabilitated by a desperate FG.😁

End of the day, Adams did not commit any 'crimes', he made huge mistakes he owned up to. All you need to do is compare and contrast. But of course the usual exceptionalism rules that out because the truth is it is mirrored elsewhere.
I have never hidden I currently vote for SF and intend to again, although with Heather jumping ship I may review that. Nobody owns my vote.

He didn't commit a crime, admitted to his 'wrongdoing', apologised for it and is still in the party - compare and contrast to elsewhere and that is entirely normal. But that would be inconvenient I suppose.

If you are telling the electorate 'that putting FF in charge would be like putting John Delaney back in charge of the FAI' and then do exactly that, then you have to own the accusations that flow from that. They needed (were desperate) FF to stay in power - they rehabilitated them.

So your argument then is Sinn Féin would be more competent?

What is the evidence for that?

If the answer to government incompetence is Sinn Féin I think they would do a far worse job.

That's just my opinion.

On their troubles their working class base is hopelessly split. The "angry young men" aren't coming back. They are in serious trouble.

You do know why they went mental at Patrick Kielty, right?

That line "Sinn Féin are traitors" is kyptonite to the party in the communities it used to dominate. There is no coming back from that. They've gone elsewhere.

The immigration issue was the trigger for much of their problems. No getting away from it.

They 'fact' is they rehabilitated FF when they said the opposite to the electorate. Continued power came before principle.

How they handled the crash is another topic.

Indeed, being the party of the urban working class in the Republic was perhaps inevitably going to cause big problems for SF in the post-Trump era. People in these urban areas will have diverse opinions and SF couldn't cater for all of them (perhaps reflecting splits within SF itself).

Many working class people in the cities would see themselves as left wing and pro-'social justice' (and pro-Gaza etc) but others have gone in a right wing direction and become strongly anti-immigration and anti-'woke' and so on. This was probably always going to see SF lose votes and part of their core support.

and the Delaney comment was made 4 years ago and welched on a few months later when power looked like it was slipping away if we went back to the polls.

No doubt the messenger will be shot or the whole theory handwaved away but worth a read in light of events.

This very thread and others is a prime example of this, yesterday I mentioned the scandals that engulfed the current government and I promptly got 'Sinn Fein-ed':

Not that anyone cares what I think, but given how many fellow journalists follow me, I thought my tweet might have given them pause before they crafted their weekend columns, but not a bit of it - like Niall Collins, they ploughed on regardless.

The tropes were trotted out, one after the other, and the ears of the “shadowy figures from Belfast” must have been burning like the fuse of a petrol bomb, so often were they mentioned.

There was an obsession with the “questions that need to be asked” of Sinn Féin, and the bait was swallowed, hook, line and sinker as the party of 2024 was once again cast as the party of 1983, as if none of the last 40-odd years of Irish history had ever happened.

When this happens in the northern part of the country, barrister, bon vivant, columnist, podcaster and raconteur Joe Brolly often calls this “IRA-ing” - everything any nationalist ever said is met with something along the lines of “but the IRA …”

In the south, the current iteration of that fashion is “Sinn Féin-ing” - no matter what serious issues the people in the south or facing, the most important thing is to talk negatively about Sinn Féin at every given opportunity.

The 'agenda setting theory' is not one I heard before.

Are you historically ignorant?

In the North, tens of thousands went to the funerals.

If we take the South, in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday there was a general strike, national day of mourning, the case taken to the UN and an angry mob burnt down the British Embassy.

You seem to be suggesting that “younger people today” have a better grasp of the people who lived through it. This rather ironically contradicts the claims that “were Catholics supposed to do nothing?!”. On the one hand the likes of you seem to suggest ignorance of the population of the time, on the other hand you seem to be suggesting they were all out there in response to events.

What has been going on for 25 years is that the Belfast lot who now get paid to administer British Rule in NI (whether directly or through the nonsense jobs made up for them) have focused their energies on “normalising” their conflict. I am assuming there are a lot of guilty consciousnesses and they want things written to their perspective before they finally die.

The tried and trusted approach is to demand people “move on” when PIRA atrocities are mentioned from a victims standpoint, but lean heavily into Loyalist and British atrocities. And at the same time we will regularly see people memorialising individuals (events are ignored, it’s always the individual volunteer). When there is natural outrage, there is the mentions of Tom Barry et al and how they were all the same. Sprinkle that with rubber ducky Gerry (not the one Jean McConville one or the one who did nothing to stop his brother) and TikTok Ra culture and here we are.

It has been very effective on that front and the surveys I mentioned underline this. It has set the cause of a United Ireland back, but that is a secondary issue from what I’ve seen of the “movement”.

It needs to be pointed out that SF was founded as a dual monarchist party.

It became a useful organisation for entryism following Easter 1916 when ironically the British falsely branded the Rising. The entryists came in, changed a bit and hooked onto things like abstention.

It was a temporary umbrella of convenience which included the cause of Labour stepping aside in 1918. As we saw though, it dawned on practical people over time that it was an umbrella whose usefulness had worn itself out if you wanted to. The pro Treatyites figured that out. Labour established themselves. And then you had Fianna Fáil. FF’s achievements between their foundation to WWII on “constitutional matters” are beyond question.

The only thing SF is useful for is a way for people who behaved badly to tether themselves to an overall cause. The cause of a United Ireland is actively damaged by these people and that brand.

Suspended over damaging a painting is probably a good move by SF, is it not? Personally I like a party who have accountability

For contrast I believe Stephen Donnelly is still in his position despite the death of Aoife Johnston happening on his watch

FF could have come back at 30%-32% imo if they hadn’t messed up 2010 and into 2011 so badly, in particular.

Their big mistake was not going to the polls in early 2009 around the time Obama came to office. A mandate for their austerity programme was needed. FF spin it as doing the national duty (keeping the place stable unlike the 1980s) and whilst I know there was an element to that, the reality was that they thought they could weather it out and it backfired spectacularly.

Cowen’s poor leadership, the debacle of the IMF entry and the ridiculous reshuffle is what sunk them to 17% and imo lost them another large chunk of voters.

Economic crashes are not beyond comeback, in either an Irish or international context.

Ultimately I think 40%+ was always on the way out for FF as their support was slipping from the 1980s under Haughey where they lost a lot of people.