Sinn Fein: The leaders populists have been waiting for.

Not the leaders they want, the leaders they need.

The Irish populist movement lacks organisation. Every dog in the street knows that. You couldn't ask for more in the way of energy or popular support or potential but it lacks structure. Which makes it highly malleable and open to manipulation and more at the mercy of outside political forces than a mature political movement would be.

So it's worth asking what forces there are in Irish politics that could end up influencing and channelling this movement. One potential 800 pound gorilla, that hasn't received any attention worth talking about, but once you recognise it seems to stand out like a colossus, is Sinn Fein.

The bounty of first preferences that populists enjoyed in the recent elections has been borrowed, or stolen depending on who you ask, from Sinn Fein. It's a disaffected vote, coming from both the working class and the middle class. It's deeply distrustful of and angry at the government, the elites and the media. And only eighteen months ago it belonged to Sinn Fein.

At the last general election there were a lot of constituencies where Sinn Fein got two quotas, two TDs worth of votes, but they had only run one candidate and that candidate's surplus ended up electing others on the left. Paul Murphy and Brid Smith of People Before Profit both owed their seats to this. It happened in Sinn Fein leader, Mary Lou McDonald's own constituency.

For the first three years of the current Dail the assumption was that Sinn Fein would be reclaiming those lost seats in the next election. Sinn Fein would be coming to power because they were going to get it right the second time around and run enough candidates to mop up those second quotas.

What was that about counting chickens?

And then the populist movement happened. Starting in East Wall eighteen months ago the Sinn Fein coronation march took a wrong turn.

Something happened in the very first days in East Wall that was as shocking as it was spontaneous. At a protest outside the ESB building someone held up one of Mary Lou McDonald's old election posters and the crowd started booing. There were calls of "Traitor". Gearoid Murphy captured the moment on video: the protest movement's own Zapruder tape.

https://x.com/gearoidmurphy_/status/1594786051586985986

It's a sign of the times that in most western countries today you could only call someone a traitor in a mocking way. It's hard to find people who believe in anything deeply enough for it to be used as a serious slur. But not in Ireland. Populists call Sinn Fein traitors because it feels right - because Sinn Fein failed to take the side of the working class in opposing government immigration policy. That feels right to the populists but, as feelings go, nothing matches the hurt felt by Sinn Fein members at being labelled that way. It touches a historical nerve. It goes home.

Almost immediately after the protests began in East Wall polling started to show the Sinn Fein vote declining in direct proportion to a growth in support for Independents - those Independents being a proxy for the populist movement.

Candy from a baby.

The populist movement took that second quota from Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein need it back. There will also be other factors in play here but there's a necessity and an urgency for Sinn Fein to focus on the voters who are now giving their support to populists. If Sinn Fein do come for that lost second quota it's going to play a big role in how things pan out for the populist movement. And for Sinn Fein itself.

The point of this piece is not to predict what Sinn Fein will do, right now the leadership themselves probably can't predict that. Instead it's just an attempt to recognise and sketch out an opportunity that exists for the party, a party with a dire and urgent need to reposition itself or face electoral ruin.

They have that pressing motive to change, they have the means to do it - a disciplined party structure that others envy - and they have the opportunity to move in to a voter rich space currently dominated by disorganised and inexperienced amateurs.

In the old days, when Sinn Fein was grassroots led, this would have happened already. Whether the current progressive leadership are ready to change - in some cases betraying their personal political creeds, and in some cases accepting demotions in order to sell the changes as credible - is anyone's guess. No one knows. The public don't even know who will ultimately be calling the shots on this or, if other voices are still being listened to, how progressive those other voices have become. You can't unhug a tree.

Here's something key. If Sinn Fein do come after those second quotas, if they do choose to enter the space currently occupied by populists, they won't be fighting populists for control. They'll be nuzzling up to them. And that's the reason they stand to have so much influence over the populist movement. They'll be muscling in to share the space. And to voice the same message and especially to give shape to the same anger. If Sinn Fein shift in this direction they will be the populist movement's de facto allies and spokesmen whether invited to be or not. Comparing these seasoned intelligent political operators with the unstructured disorganised newcomers that make up the populist movement it's obvious with whom the advantage would lie when it comes to shaping the narrative and directing how things evolve.

Many readers will be thinking that a Sinn Fein pushing anti-immigration sentiment doesn't sound at all like the party they know - woke, friend of immigrants and trans women, Mary Lou in a burka - and those readers would be right.

Is a party that looked like that up until very recently capable of replacing their message with something more like that of the populists? Are they ready to ask their progressive Councillors and TDs to quieten down? Are they capable of a serious reshuffle at the leadership level without which they couldn't sell the change in messaging as genuine?

Can the leopard change its spots?

They're not like other parties. They have a leadership who, in guarded moments with other insiders, feel able to speak on behalf of "the movement" even though they weren't, technically speaking, in the movement or active. Yep, that movement.

The Sinn Fein leadership have never had time on their side. Much has been promised in return for going the electoral politics route and, because of how much has been sacrificed by those who went before, they don't have the luxury of postponing those promises or settling for less. Leaders stepping aside or being reshuffled in ways that would be a major political sacrifice in other parties pale when compared with the sacrifices made by earlier men and women for the same goal - or at least Sinn Fein believe they shared the same goal.

How individuals feel about other agendas; gay, trans, green, choice, borders, should be secondary and nearly irrelevant. Or at least that's how long term Sinn Fein supporters and activists see it. To what extent has the leadership of Sinn Fein moved away from that and in to promoting themselves and their beliefs like the leadership of a normal sort of party. Decisions need to be made - changing nothing would itself be a choice - but the ones in a position to make those decisions are in many cases the ones who would be losing most from the changes.

Sinn Fein suffered a near death experience in the Local and European elections at the start of this month. They tried to spin the result by saying it was an improvement on how they did in the last such elections in 2019. And it was an improvement, if only slightly, on the disastrous showing they had back then. After those 2019 elections the "core group" and other senior figures held meetings with activists and relevant locals. In Dublin the post mortem was in St Finbarr’s GAA club in Cabra. The same kind of meetings will be held again in the next few weeks if they haven't begun already. Which is to the great credit of the party. In other parties party workers would shoulder the blame and be encouraged to work harder in support of an unchanging message. A party like Sinn Fein that can entertain robust levels of self criticism while maintaining coherence and authority remains a force to be reckoned with. Fianna Fail were like that once.

You don't have to be Nostradamus to predict what the leadership will be hearing in those meetings. There's no doubt that they already recognise the political opportunity that exists in the disorganised leaderless anti-immigration space. If, and its a very big if, if they're capable of moving there as an organisation then what sort of message might they adopt.

It would be foolish to try to outguess the expert policy advisers within Sinn Fein (recent setbacks notwithstanding) so this is once again just a description of the messaging opportunities rather than a prediction of what the message would be.

There are some positions that would work and aren't incompatible with who they are.

+ As people react to the sudden influx of foreigners it makes sense to lean in to nationalism. That's a given.

+ Last Christmas, at the very beginning of the change in the official narrative on immigration, Mary Lou McDonald was the first to link the pressures on housing and health services to the large number of legal immigrants in the country. Legal immigrants. Proposing restrictions on legal immigration - work and study permits - wouldn't be a stretch for the party

+ In the context of the collapse in trust in officialdom and the general feeling of exasperation with the direction the country is going in, the continued pursuit of the LGB agenda and strenuous promotion of multiculturalism feels like poking the public in the eye. It could be dropped, or very much scaled back, to the relief of a majority (but by no means all) Sinn Fein supporters.

+ which would naturally lead to the dropping and sidelining of the elected representatives and those in the leadership most closely associated with those agendas.

The recent perceived shift by Simon Harris on immigration makes it easier for all parties to harden their immigration policy but it's especially helpful to Sinn Fein. They have spent twenty years trying to lose the whiff of cordite, twenty years trying to appear safe and respectable.  Harris, whether he's aware of it or not, has just given Sinn Fein options by making it possible to be anti-immigration and respectable.

If both the willingness and the ability to change are there on Sinn Fein's part then policies like those above make some sense. But they are just policies. As far as regaining the lost quotas go they would need to be cashed out in terms of candidates. That means making over TDs and elevating councillors to put faces on this message. But it could also mean coopting, or sidling up to, or bringing in to their orbit, some elected representatives on the populist side. Think of the relationship that existed between Fianna Fail and the Independents in the Fianna Fail gene pool. That same relationship could operate between Sinn Fein and elected populist Independents (if there are any).

The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.

This wouldn't be well known but a crossover between Sinn Fein and the populist movement could already be seen on a small personal level in the local election campaigns. Ex-SFers running election campaigns for independents, running for election themselves, groups of people with a Sinn Fein history coming together over opposition to IPAS centres and turning that in to local election campaigns. The lack of detail in these examples is deliberate - it's a sensitive area for populists as well as Sinn Fein.

These former Sinn Fein members haven't appeared on the populist scene as part of some covert strategy by the party. Instead they're individuals who have each separately recognised that what fuels the anti-immigration movement overlaps with a lot of the reasons why Sinn Fein once appealed to them. They've also been turned off by the woke agenda and now to a man and woman they harbour an antipathy towards both it and the public faces in Sinn Fein who promote it.

Contributing to campaigns, running them, standing on an anti-immigration platform themselves, has been a natural development for these ex-SFers. And equally naturally the experience and competence they've brought has given them a lot of influence within those campaigns. People follow the guy who knows what he's talking about. If Sinn Fein as a party were to enter the populist space we might expect them to be similarly influential but on a grander scale.

Not only do these ex-SFers show what the party could be capable of in the populist space but they stand for something else too. Something which may be just as big a bar to Sinn Fein making the move in to populism as the reluctance of the leadership.

These ex shinners are on the outs with the party. The biggest difference between them and the populists is that they are a lot more bitter towards the party than the average protestor. They have first and second hand experience of the sacrifices that were made to put Sinn Fein where it is. 

This vanguard have a fierce and abiding animosity towards the leadership that hasn't been seen in Irish politics since after the Treaty. For them to believe the party has really moved would require not just policy changes but the humiliation of the current leadership. Mary Lou being shunted out of the party Presidency and the like.

That's obviously a massive barrier to overcome but it seems a necessary one. A Sinn Fein move on immigration won't be believable or successful unless it convinces these people that a change has happened. Sinn Fein have lost so much trust and credibility that it's hard to see how simply changing their language on immigration would win back even the fair weather supporter.  Selling something that is less than authentic would be a near impossible challenge for the party. Sinn Fein need to win these former activists back on board both as a sign the changes are genuine and also to have them replace the progressive party workers who would be stepping back. Convincing these apostates would be the litmus test for whether the changes are credible. Aithnítear cara i gcruatan.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Harris' move on immigration has made it easier for Sinn Fein to move themselves. But against that, for the change to happen some in the current leadership would have to lose their say over policy and some their status within the party. Activists, councillors and TDs will have to bite their tongues and vote for things they're personally opposed to. And equally there is huge bitterness and personal hurt to overcome that may stop former supporters and activists ever being won back.

But there's a big, voter rich, mostly unoccupied space available in Irish politics. It's a natural fit for Sinn Fein. It's made up of people who up until recently were their supporters and regaining that support represents the best chance Sinn Fein have of hitting close to 40% in the polls again.

If, and its a very big big big if, if the Sinn Fein organisation are capable of positioning themselves at the head of their once and possibly future voters in the populist movement then the current leaders of populism will be well and truly eclipsed and