05th Jun 2008
A bad week for republicanism
Sinn Fein are doing the right thing by averting a crisis and supporting the First and Deputy First Ministers’ election today at Stormont.
That said it has been a bad week for Sinn Fein and particularly for party president, Gerry Adams, not made any better by his interview on Good Morning Ulster this morning. SF used the media to fly a kite and found that whilst there was enough wind to get it up in the air nobody was interested in hanging onto it when things got gusty.
There can be no doubting as I wrote earlier in the week that there are some legitimate issues with the DUP but raising these at the last minute and taking off to No 10 just gave their opponents in the DUP, the UUP and particularly the SDLP space to point out that these were matters they should have settled over a year ago at St Andrews or on a day to day basis around the executive table.
The whole thing is pretty good case study in poor political communications.
Whoever was behind this escalation did not consider how civic society, so supportive of the party in recent years, might react. Fact is a year into devolved government nobody wants to see an Irish politician heading off to a British Prime-minister for assurances or comfort. The job of work is back here at home and the challenges are the bread and butter issues which require urgent and detailed attention of the Executive and Assembly.
Managing your communications in the hot bed of international negotiations (which SF excelled at) is something quite different to managing them in day to day power sharing government.
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