John Looby: So, what is Sinn Féin for?
Sinn Féin's President Mary Lou McDonald. The party's march to power had seemed unstoppable until the explosion of tribal hatred in Dublin last November.
Ahead of the General Election, Sinn Féin is in trouble. The easy promise of cheap houses, painless unity and open borders is fraying, while the tetchy cynicism and patchy alchemy of their new migration and housing policies reek of panic.
Until recently, the party's march to power had seemed unstoppable. With a rainbow flag in one hand and a tricolour in the other, poll after poll blazoned their dogged advance.
Sinn Féin is the Schrodinger’s Cat of Irish politics. They pose as both the radical destroyer of the mainstream and the reassuring evolution of the status quo. Sealed within the comfortable box of opposition, we can’t know whether their historic extremism is alive or dead.
But as party leader Mary Lou McDonald soothed Silicon Valley and Pearse Doherty seduced Davys, the direction of travel seemed clearer.
And yet Sinn Féin opposed our entry into the EEC in 1973 and has opposed every EU referendum since. It also opposed the incentives which helped attract the transformative Foreign Direct Investment seeking access to the Single Market. Instinctively inward and anti-capital, they are naturally pulled backwards to our pre-Lemass failures.
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Despite the recent outreach in California and London, this instinct seems as strong as ever. Strikingly their ablest spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin regularly extols the philosophy of what he calls the populist left, lauding the efforts of his ideological soulmates Corbyn and Sanders.
But nobody needs to invest in Ireland. For most of our history, this has been painfully clear. The nadir was probably the late 1950s with little progress until Jack’s Army stormed Italia ‘90.
The census of 1961 confirmed a bleak reality. The population of the Republic of Ireland had fallen to another post-Famine low of just 2.8 million. As the rest of post-war Europe enjoyed the fruits of the post-war boom, over half a million people left the Republic between 1945 and 1960.
Thankfully, we subsequently transitioned from being a basic producer of bulk agricultural products, dependent on the volatile British market, to a broad-based service economy exporting around the globe. But we should never risk our pro-EU and FDI credentials. So, what is Sinn Féin for?
Just over a decade ago, the traumatic Troika years were a shuddering lesson. While we were shielded from immediate chaos, the bruise of the contested adjustment still throbs.
More recently, the Truss fiasco should never be forgotten, while French fiscal fantasies are now pedalled by Le Pen and Melenchon. This is no time for hazy experiment. If we lose the confidence of the bond market, our social goals are lost too. So, what is Sinn Féin for?
Added to fiscal risk is their punitive approach to taxation. In the warm guise of solidarity, Sinn Féin plan to squeeze harder those already making an exceptional contribution to social harmony.
As summarised by Cliff Taylor in the Irish Times recently: "Ireland’s income tax system is notably “progressive” by international standards — putting a larger burden on higher earners. And more and more people are falling into this higher income category. In contrast, the income tax burden on lower earners is modest by international standards."
Blunting aspiration, the Sinn Féin plan is to tip this tilted seesaw even further. The 10% of taxpayer units earning more than €102,000 — who according to the Tax Strategy Group at the Department of Finance will already pay 63% of all income tax and USC in 2024 — are their target. The repeated threat to private pensions betrays the same instinct to punish ambition. So, what is Sinn Féin for?
Sinn Féin remains unstinting supporters of the IRA campaign. While their younger supporters seem nonchalantly dismissive of this history, they can never erase it. Too many lost lives. Too many shattered dreams. Fruitlessly lost. Fruitlessly shattered. So, what is Sinn Féin for?
Today, the challenges we face are real. But we have overcome much greater. In little more than half a century, we have lifted trade barriers, broadened educational opportunity, taken our place at the heart of Europe and transformed our society into an incomparably better one than at any time in our history.
Throughout this transformation, Sinn Féin has been on the wrong side of every debate that mattered. On Europe, on FDI, on fiscal credibility, and on Northern Ireland, they have been consistently wrong. Fortunately, that record has been nowhere near power.
As Irish voters ponder their choice in the months ahead, the wisdom of the 17th-century English author and politician, Lord Falkland, grows ever more apt: "Where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."
So, remind me again, what is Sinn Féin for?
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- John Looby is a Senior Portfolio Manager at KBI Global Investors. The views expressed are his own.
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