Gerry Adams doing it his way as retirement looms

WHO knew Sinn Féin and Fine Gael had so much in common?

And what an irony that Gerry Adams, who has so recently reveled in labelling Enda Kenny the Frank Sinatra of Irish politics due to his never-ending goodbye, now appears to be just as much a closet fan of ol’ blue eyes himself.

Sinn Féin’s annual pre-Dáil think-in yesterday may have heard talk of the Stormont standoff, calls for a Brexit-based United Ireland referendum within five years, and the usual rough and tumble barbs at the Fine Gael-led government.

However, in reality, there was only ever one issue in the ether. Gerry Adams, like his recently decommissioned sparring partner, is not long for this political world.

And, just like the Fine Gael melodrama before it, the timing of his glacier-speed departure was playing on his fellow travellers’ minds and crucially those of his party’s rivals.

It was understandable, therefore, that Mr Adams chose to address the issue directly in his opening address to his colleagues during the only public part of the think-in event.

After a night of wildfire media rumours sparked by the fact his speech was flagged as being a significant address, Mr Adams gave the clearest indication yet that he is preparing to leave the hot seat.

However just, like Mr Kenny before him, not quite yet. Taking a leaf out of Endless Enda’s 2015 decision that if re-elected he would not seek a third term, Mr Adams yesterday used his speech to explain that he would definitively outline his own departure plans if he is re-elected president at November’s party ard fheis.

He will seek the re-election nod and he will lead Sinn Féin into the next general election, it was stated. However, citing the party’s 10-year transition plan, he said after that all bets are off.

“I will be allowing my name to go forward for the position of uachtarain Shinn Féin [at the November ard fhéis].

“And if elected I will be setting out our priorities and in particular our planned process of generational change, including my own future intentions”, he said, to a crowd left momentarily silent.

The decision to delay the inevitable for a few more months is, of course, far more logical than Fine Gael’s recent soap opera, as while leaving now may help the party’s general election planning it would also leave it with a significant leadership gap left in the wake of Martin McGuinness’s recent death.

However, the long Sinatra-style goodbye also poses serious questions about how the party will now react, which cannot be under-estimated either.

With Mr Adams indicating he will leave the hot seat post-general election rather than before it, Sinn Féin is now asking the public to vote for one leader but in all likelihood get another who by necessity will take the party in a subtly different direction.

It also opens up the risk of internal divisions, with both Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty — the two most likely frontrunners to replace their long-standing colleague — making it abundantly clear yesterday they see themselves as the future, with a previously unthinkable potential coalition with Fianna Fáil now a key issue to discuss.

And, most crucial of all, Mr Adams’s long goodbye means that the murky past — and some claim present — of Sinn Féin is not yet out of sight, and nowhere near out of mind.

That fact was underlined again in recent days by the current leader’s deeply controversial comments that the murderers of provisional IRA victim Tom Oliver — an innocent farmer killed in 1991 — should go unpunished, and by the party’s youngest female councillor Lisa Marie Sheehy quitting after accusing the party of regimental “toxic” bullying.

In almost every way possible, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael have nothing in common. Yet, in purely internal party political terms, the Republican party now faces the exact same dilemma only recently overcome by its parliamentary polar opposite.

Just like Enda Kenny, unless handled carefully, Gerry Adams’s long goodbye risks undermining the foothold Sinn Féin has gained as it leaves more questions than answers for voters.

And while Sinn Féin may think this is an entirely internal party issue, the cold-blooded reality is that Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil could take advantage and seek an early election before Sinn Féin has its own plans firmly in place.

Like his Sinatra barbs to Enda Kenny before him, now, the end is near for Mr Adams. He may be lingering just a little as he reaches his final curtain, for old time’s sake if nothing else. However, if he holds on too long, those ‘old times’ could still be its electoral undoing.

Something his soon-to-be- retirement colleague Enda Kenny knows more than a little about.