No matter what party you support, or what your personal political beliefs are, it’s hard to argue with the fact that Irish society is not working the way it’s currently being run.
With soaring house prices, brutal hospital waiting lists, rising crime rates, a crippling national debt, suffering rural and fishing communities, and much more, these are objectively not the fruits of a national strategy that’s functioning correctly. And many of these problems are at least a decade old, with no sign of improvement on the horizon.
No doubt even the government leaders, if you got them drunk in private with no cameras around, would admit that this does not look good to your average punter. Deep down in their heart of hearts, they have to know why the traditional parties have been steadily losing ground.
So with that said, it’s not hard to imagine why many voters would want a big political change, nor is it hard to understand why a party that promised that change would do very well at the polls.
And that is the cue for a party like Sinn Féin – the self-styled “Party of Change” – to enter stage right.
Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar do not represent change. Mary Lou & the leadership team & Sinn Féin do. IF you want change, be the change you want to see. Vote Sinn Féin. The party of change.
Vótail Kathleen Funchion 1 in Carlow/Kilkenny. pic.twitter.com/zkycWVEAZb— Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) February 5, 2020
As Mary Lou boldly stated in her 2021 Ard Fheis speech: “We are the party of change. Leading change across Ireland.”
In fact, the word “change” was used 21 times throughout the speech from start to finish.
In recent opinion polls, they certainly seemed to have reaped the rewards of that message, pulling well ahead of other parties. But is this success earned? We have to ask, what kind of change does Sinn Féin actually represent?
While the party’s rhetoric might take one approach, their actions seem to take quite another. In fact, there is an almost airtight formula for finding out what Sinn Féin’s policy is going to be on any given issue. I call it “Mary Lou’s Law.”
Here’s how it works in a nutshell: you take whatever policy the government holds. Then you multiply it by two, and very likely, that’s the Sinn Féin policy.
Let’s take an issue like climate change as an example.
Many people in rural Ireland are deeply unhappy with the government’s Climate Action Bill, because it puts huge pressure on farming communities, household heating bills, petrol costs, and so on. But what is Sinn Féin’s policy on the Climate Action Bill?
Well, as reported by the Irish Examiner:
It lacks ambition – as in, it doesn’t go far enough. It should be more radical and more extreme again. In other words, as per Mary Lou’s Law: Sinn Féin’s Climate Policy equals the Government’s Climate Policy times two. They agree with the green goal – they just want more of it.
Take an issue like illegal immigration.
The government wants to reward 17,000 illegal migrants who have broken Irish immigration law with a path to citizenship.
These people have metaphorically hopped the fence into our country with no legal right to be here. To give them amnesty is to make a mockery of our laws, and reduce our border to swiss cheese. So what is Sinn Féin’s policy on this issue?
Well, they want to give amnesty, not to 17,000 illegal immigrants like the government, but 26,000.
In other words, again: Sinn Féin’s immigration policy equals the Government’s immigration policy times two. They’re happy to give amnesty to illegal migrants – they just wish it was given to even more of them.
Take an issue like young children changing their gender.
The government wants to allow children under the age of 16 to change their gender with parental consent. Sinn Féin wants to let children under 16 change their gender without parental consent.
Exact same policy, just a more extreme version of it.
Take minimum alcohol pricing. The government says “We’re bringing in massive price hikes in alcohol across the Republic of Ireland.” What does Sinn Féin say?
“Yeah, minimum alcohol pricing is great – but why stop at the Republic? We want it in Northern Ireland as well.”
On the 12.5% corporation tax rate, the government said it was the “right decision.” But if you ask Sinn Féin, we didn’t even have a decision – Pearse Doherty said we have “no choice” at all, and doing anything else would “tarnish our reputation.”
The government want Covid restrictions like lockdown? Sinn Féin wants more restrictions.
Take the Covid certs, for example, where Sinn Féin TDs were giving out in the Dáil at the lack of compliance with them.
Imelda Munster continues Sinn Féin's tradition of egging the government on to ever more tyranny, now demanding sanctions for non-discriminating businesses and the setting up of a Stasi-like informant hotline so people can report non-compliance. Includes Catherine Martin's reply. pic.twitter.com/yYun1bvAyC
— JRD (@JRD0000) November 11, 2021
The government wants abortion? Sinn Féin wants more abortion.
The government likes RTÉ and doesn’t want to defund them? Sinn Féin likes RTÉ and doesn’t want to defund them.
Etcetera, etcetera.
On basically any issue that is of importance to our country, Sinn Féin’s answer is “We want exactly what the government is doing, but we want more of it and we want it quicker.”
So to put that another way, Sinn Féin believes in the government’s agenda more than the government does. They are the biggest cheerleaders for the current policies being implemented.
The reasoning seems to be that “One dose of this medicine almost killed the patient – so better give him double the dose and see if that improves anything.” It doesn’t logically follow, does it? Why would we accelerate and double down on ideas which have been failing for a decade and which are leading to mass discontent?
Is this what you would call “opposition” or “change”? Does opposing somebody mean you agree with them on basically everything, and you just wish they’d do more of it?
If your Mam cooks a delicious apple pie, and you absolutely adore it, and your only complaint is you wish she’d bake more often, would you say you “oppose” your Mam’s cooking?
Well hardly. Underneath the spectacle of all the screaming and shouting in the Dáil, at a certain point it starts to feel like nothing more theatrics and a show.
After all, Mary Lou has already said multiple times over the years that she’d be open to going into coalition with the government. And the feeling is apparently mutual.
And at the end of the day, why not? What important fundamental issue do they actually disagree on? LGBTQ+ issues and social liberalism. Mass open borders immigration, Black Lives Matter and woke identity politics, Covid restrictions, climate change, radical feminism. They agree on basically everything. The issues they differ on are all surface-level minutiae and froth, and clearly just contrived to keep up the appearance of disagreement.
21st century Irish politics suffers from an illusion: the illusion of choice. As voters, we dutifully enter the voting booth every few years, and we see all these traditional parties listed, thinking we have this wide menu to select from. But many of us fail to realise that virtually all of those parties hold the same views on almost everything.
It’s been said that Ireland has a 2.5 party system – but that’s false. It’s a one party system, and only one way of thinking is allowed.
When these lads say “we’re all in this together,” they definitely aren’t joking.