Sinn Fein - Finished in the Republic

[GweylTah]

Perhaps if Adams wants to feel more a part of things rather than being a redundant onlooker, he could resign his British seat and seek election for where his main holiday home is?

The risk, of course, is that the people of Donegal might see through the guff more easily than 'think what your told' sheep in west Belfast.

[his holiness nb]

You managed to insult the intelligence of the entire of West Belfast there Gweltyah.
I suppose you will somehow manage to justify that?

Whatever about EG or Sammy, at least they make their arguments with a degree of manners, unlike yourself.

[GweylTah]

You managed to insult the intelligence of the entire of West Belfast there Gweltyah.
I suppose you will somehow manage to justify that?

Whatever about EG or Sammy, at least they make their arguments with a degree of manners, unlike yourself.

We seem to have another precious, humourless poster in our midst.  Sorry, dear.

[his holiness nb]

Gweltyah, I like a good laugh as well as anyone, but lets not bullshit here.
You dish out insults to everyone in West Belfast and then hide under the veil of "humour".

Do you honestly beleive that people find it funny when you call the people of West Belfast, who you quite clearly have a strong dislike for, "think what your told, sheep".

You f**king nob (that statement is not meant as a joke by the way)

[magickingdom]

Perhaps if Adams wants to feel more a part of things rather than being a redundant onlooker, he could resign his British seat and seek election for where his main holiday home is?

The risk, of course, is that the people of Donegal might see through the guff more easily than 'think what your told' sheep in west Belfast.

you are one intolerable cnut...  if i had to put up with the like of you i'd be voting sinn fein too.

[An Fear Rua]

Perhaps if Adams wants to feel more a part of things rather than being a redundant onlooker, he could resign his British seat and seek election for where his main holiday home is?

The risk, of course, is that the people of Donegal might see through the guff more easily than 'think what your told' sheep in west Belfast.

you are one intolerable cnut...  if i had to put up with the like of you i'd be voting sinn fein too.

Ha ha!!! just about sums it up perfectly! Nice one Kingdom

[GweylTah]

Gweltyah, I like a good laugh as well as anyone, but lets not bullshit here.
You dish out insults to everyone in West Belfast and then hide under the veil of "humour".

Do you honestly beleive that people find it funny when you call the people of West Belfast, who you quite clearly have a strong dislike for, "think what your told, sheep".

You f**king nob (that statement is not meant as a joke by the way)

Twaddle ... and the mask slips.

[GweylTah]

Perhaps if Adams wants to feel more a part of things rather than being a redundant onlooker, he could resign his British seat and seek election for where his main holiday home is?

The risk, of course, is that the people of Donegal might see through the guff more easily than 'think what your told' sheep in west Belfast.

you are one intolerable cnut...  if i had to put up with the like of you i'd be voting sinn fein too.

The thing I can't tolerate is intolerance, there's a hell-of-a-lot-of-it here, dog's abuse spewed from the gutter.

I'll rise above it.

[stephenite]

I'll rise above it.

No you won't

[GalwayBayBoy]

Perhaps if Adams wants to feel more a part of things rather than being a redundant onlooker, he could resign his British seat and seek election for where his main holiday home is?

The risk, of course, is that the people of Donegal might see through the guff more easily than 'think what your told' sheep in west Belfast.

you are one intolerable cnut...  if i had to put up with the like of you i'd be voting sinn fein too.

The thing I can't tolerate is intolerance, there's a hell-of-a-lot-of-it here, dog's abuse spewed from the gutter.

I'll rise above it.

Irony meter reading off the scale.

[twotwocharlie]

gweyltah has someone burned your favorite blue shirt,or maybe it's just the time of the month.

[Sky Blue]

To get back on track, here's an interesting assessment form SF in Dublin


Five years ago, in the aftermath of the 2002 General Election, I pointed out in this paper that we had contested that election with a manifesto that made little or no economic sense. Our spending commitments vastly outweighed our revenue generating proposals and the reality was that while our manifesto was a radical document in itself, the numbers did not add up and it was not a credible proposal for government.
Five years on, and we find ourselves in the same position.
The difference is that in this election, the party had five years of experience in Leinster House with a full complement of policy workers and a number of people with the skills and experience to draft a coherent, costed, set of socialist economic positions that were based within the existing economic context. We simply decided not to contest the election on them.
Sinn Féin proposed the most sweeping, wide-ranging and exhaustive spending commitments of any political party on this island. Our spending plans for health and housing in particular dwarfed the other parties. Our proposals to take back under democratic control Aer Lingus, and possibly Eircom, would have cost the guts of several billion euros. We proposed substantial increases in social welfare payments in an effort to achieve the very real objective of eliminating poverty in Ireland.
There is nothing wrong with these proposals. They are radical ideas that would make a real and substantial difference in the lives of every person on this island. But they cost money.
Sinn Féin's position during the election was that we could pay for the all of our extra spending out of the existing tax take. The foolishness of this position can be seen in the announcement last week from the Department of Finance that for the first time in four years the tax take is falling below expectations.
The housing market, a vital part of an economy, overly dependent on the construction industry, is in decline with AIB now predicting a 2% fall in house prices this year. Inflation is consistently running at over 5% and there is increasing pressure from public sector workers like the nurses for greater pay increases to meet the rising cost of living.
None of this is a revelation. A downturn in economic growth in the 26 Counties has been on the cards for 18 months and more. Many of the economic proposals of our political opponents were described by commentators as being unduly optimistic in suggesting growth rates of over 4% per annum, a fraction of what would be needed to meet our proposals.
It didn't have to be this way. Sinn Féin's position prior to the election was straight-forward. We argued that the only way to increase spending to the levels we were proposing, was to increase taxes on certain wealthy sections of Irish society while maintaining, and even reducing, the tax burden on ordinary workers. We could not increase spending, we argued, without finding the money to pay for it.

We laid out these proposals in a number of pre-budget submissions, most recently in December 2006, and in policy documents on enterprise and on housing. These proposals were outlined, analysed and discussed in An Phoblacht, as well as at party policy conferences. They were further discussed and subsequently endorsed by the membership at the Ard Fheis.
To summarily announce, as senior party figures did, that those policies no longer exist without identifying alternate sources of funding or consulting with the party's members is both irresponsible and overrides the party's decision making structures. Any notion that we would benefit electorally from this strategy should now be dismissed for the nonsense that it always was.
This left us with the situation where Sinn Féin candidates and activists found themselves dealing on the doorsteps with the repercussions of sudden, unexpected policy changes announced in the media. Party representatives on the media found themselves defending economic positions that made little or no sense and in many cases, that they did not believe themselves.
Rather than presenting a coherent economic analysis to challenge the right-wing consensus on economics, placing Sinn Féin as a genuine alternative to disenchanted voters, we chose not to present any serious analysis at all, exposing the party's positions on a range of subjects to increasing ridicule from the media and our political opponents as the campaign wore on.
Mícheál MacDonncha argued two weeks ago that the party was right not to rule out going into coalition with Fianna Fáil ahead of the election. While not as convinced of that as he is, I certainly believe he is right when he suggests we took this strategy too far.
There is a difference between not ruling another party out as a possible coalition partner, and the position that Sinn Féin adopted during the election campaign of an almost embarrassing eagerness to get into government regardless of cost. As Fianna Fáil's Minister Dermot Ahern not altogether inaccurately observed during the campaign, the best way to know in advance which Sinn Féin policy would be dropped next was for Fianna Fáil to rule out coalition with us on those grounds.
Why would voters critical of Fianna Fáil vote for a party that was demonstrating every day that it was doing all it could to make itself attractive to that party? Why would people voting for change give a preference to a party repeatedly underlining its desire to help maintain the status quo by putting Fianna Fáil back in government? Why would they vote for a party that was willing to drop longstanding economic policies in its eagerness to be considered acceptable?
We failed to weather the storm, because we failed to give people a reason to vote for us. We sought to seize our own piece of ground in the ideological wasteland that is the over-crowded centre in Irish politics. We appeared incoherent and opportunistic in shedding policies at what, in the beginning of the campaign, felt like a daily basis.
That the result was not worse for us, that we increased votes in numerous constituencies, is down solely to the efforts of our candidates, activists and supporters on the ground who performed magnificently.
Our opponents in the media have been eager to cast this electoral setback as a disaster of unprecedented scale, an end once and for all of the threat posed by Sinn Féin to the established political and economic interests dominant in Ireland.
As boxes opened across the country that Friday last month, more than one republican reflected that it was 15 years to the day since unionist paramilitaries, acting in collusion with British intelligence, murdered Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton.
That same year, Gerry Adams lost Sinn Féin's single Westminster seat in a General Election and we were still five years from our first TD in this phase of the struggle.
We have had bad days before. We have had much worse days. We will have them again.
On each occasion, our opponents confidently predicted our demise and argued that we could not survive, that the threat posed by Sinn Féin had evaporated. And on each occasion, our members, supporters, activists and elected representatives proved them wrong.
If we learn the lessons of the 2007 General Election, we will do so again. We will confound our critics, re-organise our party and return again to the task set for us many generations ago, the establishment of an independent, democratic, socialist republic in Ireland.

• Justin Moran is a member of Sinn Féin in Dublin's South West Inner City and is a former Chairperson of Dublin Sinn Féin

[Billys Boots]

I'll rise above it.

Now this I have to see.

[Evil Genius]

Gweltyah, I like a good laugh as well as anyone, but lets not bullshit here.
You dish out insults to everyone in West Belfast and then hide under the veil of "humour".

Do you honestly beleive that people find it funny when you call the people of West Belfast, who you quite clearly have a strong dislike for, "think what your told, sheep".

You f**king nob (that statement is not meant as a joke by the way)

Had GweylTah posted that the people of, say, North Antrim were "think what your told, sheep" (i.e. for consistently voting in Paisley), would this have provoked the same outrage in you?


[Personally, I have always subscribed to the view that "people get the politicians they deserve"  ]

[Evil Genius]

To get back on track, here's an interesting assessment form SF in Dublin


Five years ago, in the aftermath of the 2002 General Election, I pointed out in this paper that...

Rather than presenting a coherent economic analysis to challenge the right-wing consensus on economics, placing Sinn Féin as a genuine alternative to disenchanted voters,

...the establishment of an independent, democratic, socialist republic in Ireland.

• Justin Moran is a member of Sinn Féin in Dublin's South West Inner City and is a former Chairperson of Dublin Sinn Féin

Interesting and insightful analysis of SF's position in the Republic. However, if you take the crux of his argument (highlighted), rather than providing a solution to their problem, it actually underpins it (imo).

That is, if they scrabble around in the centre, they'll get nowhere against the mainstream parties. However, if they move to the left, unless there is a corresponding widespread and sustained shift to the left amongst the electorate (unlikely, imo), then SF will never be more than a niche party in the Republic, for whom the best electoral outcome is as a junior partner in a coalition dominated by one or more of the large, "Establishment" parties.

Not only that, but in order successfully to re-position themselves, they will need to transform themselves from a party which is still seen by many in the Republic as a Northern dominated "Brits-Out/End Partition Party", with (vague) hard-left Economic policies tacked on, to a modern, progressive Left-Wing Socialist Party, with its headquarters in Dublin (the nation's capital and by far the largest centre of population). Which, of course, should be achievable, but only so long as the present Leadership is willing/able to accommodate this (I wouldn't hold my breath on that one!)

And none of this addresses the problem they face in NI, where their history and policies mean that they are limited to achieving a maximum of 45% of the vote. Worse still, the present political settlement means that whilst their "minority" status cannot be used to deny them a place in Government, it also effectively entrenches that minority status. And that's all before we even get to the fact that they are being entrenched in an establishment which not merely reflects partition, but would appear in the opinion of many, actively to reinforce it!

I must say, my heart bleeds for their predicament...