Bashing McGuinness

Since Martin McGuinness joined the race to the Áras, most of the commentary has surrounded his less than squeaky clean past. This has come from the media, bloggers and also the political arena itself. The latest is Fintan O'Toole's piece in today's Irish Times where he suggests McGuinness could be liable for war crimes.

I'm no fan of McGuinness and certainly won't be voting for him. The farce that is Northern politics has shown him to be fairly inept in an executive role. The actions of Sinn Féin in government up North have shown them to be a fairly right-wing, conservative party, quite at odds with the image they try to portray down here. His following Gerry Adams into southern politics also shows either a contempt for people who have worked hard for SF in the Republic or an effective evacuation of Stormont by the heavy hitters.

However, I strongly object to people relentlessly harping back to McGuinness' past involvement in the IRA from the 70s onwards. Sure, he carried out some pretty awful acts and refused to recognise the authority of the Irish Courts. But when we down south voted 94% in favour of the Good Friday Agreement, we effectively said that we accept that there was a war being fought, but that now we were entering the peace and that we were drawing a line in the sand. Therefore we have to live with our decision and allow those combatants to re-enter normal society and that includes electoral politics.

Little old Louth

Once upon a time I would have considered Louth, the smallest county in Ireland, to be quite the boring place electorally. From 1982 to 2002 there were 2FF, 1FG and 1Lab returned (in various orders) over the course of the 5 elections. Despite being on the border the SF vote never materialized into a serious challenge for a seat since the heady days of the civil war.

Then in 2002, Arthur Morgan made the breakthrough for Sinn Fein and ousted Michael Bell, to take a seat which he held in the 2007 election. Following the boundary review, the Louth constituency was extended to a 5 seater with some sections of Co Meath near Drogheda transferred to the constituency. The excitement continued when the resignation of John O'Donoghue resulted in the appointment of "Captain" Seamus Kirk as Ceann Comhairle, effectively turning Louth back into a 4 seater. At the time, this would have been seen by FF as a way to try and return 3 deputies from the constituency as they would have hoped to get two elected on preferences. Obviously with the further decline in FF support in the polls, it is still highly likely that Dermot Ahern will be re-elected thereby returning two FF TDs in Louth.

Last week, Morgan announced that he would not be seeking a nomination for the next general election, citing his desire to get back into the family business. To most that was seen as a passing of the torch to the next generation in Louth SF, with Tomás Sharkey most likely to win the nomination. Having won a seat on the council in 2004 and then almost doubling his vote in 2009, along with his exposure during the European elections he would have been seen as a fairly safe selection to replace Morgan. However, yesterday, Gerry Adams threw a massive cat amongst the pigeons by announcing that he was going to seek a nomination in Louth, resign as an MLA and then abdicate his seat in Westminster should he be elected to the Dáil.

So looking at the next election we have the following possibilities

• FF - Kirk automatically re-elected. Ahern and AN Other on the ballot paper. It would be a massive admission of defeat not to run two candidates
  
• FG - Fergus O'Dowd and AN Other. Mairead McGuinness ran here before, but I don't see her giving up the MEP role that easily.
  
• Lab - Ger Nash - with the additional commuter votes in the Drogheda area, Nash should be in the running this time out.
  
• Green - Mark Dearey, recently appointed to the Seanad
  
• SF - Gerry Adams. The big question is whether SF will play it safe and have Adams romp home topping the poll or will he try to capitalize on his personal vote and bring in Sharkey as a running mate.
  

At this stage, based on a two North, two South split I'm calling it Ahern and Adams as the Dundalkites and O'Dowd and Nash getting the nod in Drogheda with Kirk as #5. However, as always, candidate selection will make all the difference and you could easily see Nash loosing out to a 2nd SF or a strong 2nd FG candidate. Watch this space with interest.

In terms of Adams' political future in the south, it is somewhat odd that he chose to land in one of the safest SF seats rather than try to win a seat that would have been considered un-winnable for the party up until now. Places like Dublin West, Dublin Central and Cork North Central would all be potential gains. I guess the long game is getting above 7 TDs elected and then having Adams act as de-facto leader of the opposition against an FG/L government since FF won't really be in a position to say much, due to the mess they will have left behind. Running Adams in a place where he might not have won would scupper this strategy. Who'd have ever thought that SF can play it safe at times?!

Cllr Forde jumps ship

Like the Government with TDs, Sinn Féin aren't having the best of luck with their councillors on Dublin City Council. Seven councillors were returned for them at the June elections but after this weekend's announcement that Killian Forde from Donaghmede has left the party they are down to four. He has followed in the footsteps of Louise Minihan (Ballyfermot) and Christy Burke (North Inner City). This isn't overly surprising when you consider that Forde was the Councillor who proposed the 2010 budget at the Council meeting before Christmas taking a position contrary to the other SF councillors.

To my mind this is just the latest sign of a continual downward trend of support for SF south of the border. First they lost Mary Lou McDonald as MEP in the Dublin Constituency. Now SF will argue that with the constituency going from four to three seats that they were always going to be the ones to loose out but this not true. With Eoin Ryan losing his seat and Joe Higgins taking one, it shows that there was a leftish, protest vote in the city and SF were not the party to attract it.

The story was the same in the local elections where nationally SF returned exactly the same number of councillors in spite of the continued collapse of the Fianna Fail vote and the gains of other left leaning groups like Labour and PBP. After June's elections, Toireasa Ferris came out and slammed the party leadership as being too Northern focused and that the party was not suitably set up to contest elections south of the border. She demanded a review of operations and priorities in the south but that seems to have been ignored by the Adams/McGuinness power block in the North.

So where to from here for Sinn Féin? If they continue on their current path the are facing a complete meltdown in the Republic. They are being torn between the traditional, 32 county republicans (mainly rural) and the left wing, community activists (mainly urban) and a jump to either one will loose the other to FF or Lab/PBP. While it would go against everything they stand for, they should separate the party into a Northern and Southern section and let someone like Ferris take over down here. If we have another general election with Adams turning up for leaders' debates and McDonald failing again in Dublin Central, then SF are a spent force this side of the border.