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Sinn Féin under fire from Northern Irish base over shift to ‘middle class’ under failed election strategy

‘A blind man on a galloping horse would have told you that you were putting up too many candidates,’ said one senior Northern republican

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald speaking to the media at the RDS. Publicly Sinn Féin’s Northern leaders have this week defended her leadership position, but privately resentment is building, according to party sources. Photograph: Damien Storan/PA Wire

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Seanín Graham
Fri Jun 14 2024 - 06:00

Unease among Sinn Féin’s Northern base about the party’s election strategy in the Republic has given way to anger following its disastrous performance in the local and European polls.

The miscalculation in running multiple candidates in some areas where they only held one seat was not just “off the wall” but also ignored the warnings of grassroots opposed to the move.

“A blind man on a galloping horse would have told you that you were putting up too many candidates,” said one senior Northern republican. “It was a knee-jerk reaction to not standing enough in the 2020 election. But 2020 was not 2024 and they didn’t take account of the changing context, which has been changing for 18 months.

“They also didn’t take account of the lessons they got from their base. For example, they were going in and telling people they were standing four candidates – and locals were saying, ‘there’s no way we’ll elect four’. Whoever Mary Lou has around her strategising, how did they not read this?”

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With the UK general election three weeks away (Sinn Féin is fielding 14 candidates in Northern Ireland), concerns are also mounting about the disconnect between the Dublin leadership and Belfast activists. One long-standing party member described feeling like an “outcast”.

[ ‘Their opponents painted them as a bunch of flip-floppers’: What next for Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin? ]

Publicly Sinn Féin’s Northern leaders have this week defended Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership position, with Stormont economy minister Conor Murphy among those to back her. But privately resentment is building, according to party sources.

A bitter internal row erupted over Ms McDonald and Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill’s trip to Washington for St Patrick’s celebrations amid calls for them to boycott the White House event over the party’s pro-Palestinian stance on Gaza.

Dublin’s “flip-flopping” over the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Ireland last November also cost them votes among “very angry” younger voters, another Northern party member said.

“There’s a feeling the Southern leadership is tripping over themselves to try to appeal to the middle class to win the middle ground for a united Ireland. Some feel they’re alienating their base in the North, the people who’ve done so much work to get them to where they are.”

Another source criticised Ms McDonald over comments made to The Irish Times last year when she signalled that she may not attend republican commemorations if she becomes Taoiseach. “That does not sit well with people; I don’t think she has any feel for the republican base, and her agenda has been broadly to steer Sinn Féin into the mainstream.”

Remarks made by Ms McDonald to the media earlier this week about the party being “nailed on” for Northern gains in the July 4th UK election only served to illustrate how “out of touch” the leadership is, the party member added. While Sinn Féin is strongly tipped to keep its existing seven Westminster seats, party insiders say there is only a “slim chance” of them securing an additional seat.

“The one thing leaders don’t do is raise expectations; they fire their people up. If you want to say you’re going to make gains you need to be subtle about it,” a source said.

Political commentator Brian Feeney agrees there is annoyance among Northern party members about the Southern election strategy but dismisses suggestions about a dip in support for their leader. “There’s a lot of respect for Mary Lou up here. People in Sinn Féin think she’s a great asset, people look up to her and point to her and say ‘this is the sort of person we have’,” he said.

However, “there is a lot of disquiet about the strategy and the fact there wasn’t a change as the polls began to slide. People were being parachuted in to fill spaces; they were really stretched to find them. They were spreading canvassers so thinly, people from the North were involved in canvassing in Donegal and other parts of the South.”

Feeney pointed to the strategies behind electoral successes in Belfast – in particular that of Sinn Féin MP John Finucane’s historic defeat of the DUP’s Nigel Dodds in North Belfast during the last Westminster election in 2019.

“Election strategies are the one thing that Sinn Féin up here are bloody good at,” he added. “They’ll run the right number of people in council elections and Assembly elections. One of them said to me the other day, ‘why could they not have done that in the South? It’s not rocket science’.”

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