Newton Emerson: Dublin parties can resurrect Stormont

It is within the gift of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to restore power-sharing at Stormont. All they have to do is tell Sinn Féin it is not an acceptable coalition partner in the South while it is blocking coalition government in the North.

Sinn Féin is so focused on getting into office in Dublin that the party may even retire Gerry Adams at Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s behest.

Both parties have made it clear that Adams is not an acceptable tánaiste, while also making it fairly clear that Sinn Féin will be acceptable enough without him.

His departure is now being flagged up ahead of any general election in the South.

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Last weekend, Sinn Féin representatives informed a Sunday newspaper that Adams will step down at the next ardfheis, which the party will arrange as soon as it can catch its breath between elections in Northern Ireland.

It has become painfully obvious that Sinn Féin is happy with Stormont in limbo

However, also last weekend, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin told a Sunday radio programme that Sinn Féin had “deliberately engineered the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive”.

Could this be a new issue in southern acceptability?

Sinn Féin would undoubtedly say Martin’s accusation was unreasonable, and the party would have a point.

The very worst that could be said about Sinn Féin’s role in Stormont’s collapse is that it needed a cast iron excuse to walk out, which the DUP duly provided despite weeks of warnings and opportunities to back down.

Yet it has since become painfully obvious that Sinn Féin is happy with Stormont in limbo, while the DUP is desperately scrabbling around for some way to undo its mistake.

Restoring devolution

Timescales for restoring devolution range from this September to never. Sinn Féin’s agenda is being set by Britain’s divorce from the European Union, which Adams has bluntly described as an opportunity not to be wasted.

Brexit will play out over a minimum period of two years if everything goes to plan, or five-10 years in the almost certain event they do not not.

Sinn Féin has openly welcomed missing the two-year deadline as another opportunity, because Ireland would then gain a full veto over any Brexit deal, rather than the qualified majority vote it has under the article 50 arrangement.

All of this is a longer game than current manoeuvrings in the Dáil. Chances are, by the next general election in the South, Stormont will still be in its present state of deadlock.

Would Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil enter government with Sinn Féin under such circumstances?

Sinn Féin may be tempted to find out, or at least to drag its Stormont stalling out until the last possible moment.

Calculations would be based on how much southern voters care about a northern problem. Stormont’s three-year welfare reform crisis, running up to 2015, revealed complete southern indifference as devolution was repeatedly brought to the brink of collapse.

Furthermore, this crisis has been engineered for a southern audience – Sinn Féin did not want to be making benefit cuts on one side of the Border while pitching to left-wing voters on the other. Attempts by Dáil rivals to highlight this failed to find any traction.

The implication is that Sinn Féin can mothball Stormont and neither it nor a southern partner will necessarily be punished at the polls.

In practice, things would be a lot messier and nastier.

Sinn Féin justifies its withdrawal from Stormont by alleging unionist bigotry and British duplicity. The longer it needs these justifications, the more general and poisonous they will become.

We have already reached an infantile Manicheism where the DUP is portrayed as hating equality, while all Sinn Féin apparently wants is respect.

Making this the position of an Irish government party looks unthinkable.

Hopeless message

Too much hostility would radiate towards London, while the hopeless message on unionism would not serve even Sinn Féin’s long-term goal.

Fine Gael must speak to Sinn Féin as Fianna Fáil has done – as a party that might form the next government

Up until Stormont collapsed, Adams sold the peace process as a way of getting into government on both sides of the Border.

The prospect of a hard Border may have changed that plan, with Sinn Féin driving unity from office in the South. But that is still at odds with monstering unionists as impossible to deal with. The North must eventually be made to seem digestible, unionists and all.

Few Sinn Féin statements on Stormont are now complete without a reference to the Irish Government as co-guarantor of the peace process and its many formal agreements.

None of those texts specifically state that Dublin must take northern nationalism’s side in a row but that is assumed to an extent that makes it tricky to confront Sinn Féin alone, especially when Sinn Féin is aiming to be in the Irish government.

The three-stranded model of the Belfast Agreement was not designed for two strands to overlap.

Fine Gael can untangle this by speaking to Sinn Féin as Fianna Fáil has done – not as a Government, but as a party that might form the next government.

That increasingly looks like the most direct way of engineering Stormont’s resurrection.