In her first significant act as president of Sinn Féin, Mary-Lou McDonald has shown she possesses a vital political skill: in a dispute, get your retaliation in first. The fact that just about every reporter and commentator agrees with her version of events leading up to the talks breakdown also helps.
So though Gregory Campbell came on The View last night and bared his teeth in what I’m assuming was a smile, and raised as many diversionary hares as he could possibly find – a going-away present for Gerry Adams, the difference between accommodation and agreement, the different language used by Michelle O’Neill and Mary-Lou – the damage had been done. Arlene, Simon Hamilton and others had given a general assent to the proposals Mary-Lou listed, but when they finally went back to their MLAs, they were told that this would not be tolerated. Sound of hand-brake turn by Arlene and Co as they went into denial about what had happened. Too late: the truth was already out there.
Mind you, if she hadn’t talked about what wouldn’t be in any Irish Language Act – compulsory Irish in schools, bilingual signage everywhere – Arlene might have been able to persuade her MLAs and MPs that this was a deal worth taking. She could have argued that, since it was to be balanced by an Ulster-Scots Act (stop that, Virginia), it was a deal worth making and one which allowed her party to deny that the Irish Language Act was stand-alone. But the enlightened Orange Lodge minds at Queen’s University ( I said stop that, Virginia) and elsewhere, not least in the ranks of her own MPs and MLAs, scuppered the entire accommodation of difference.
One final point. Much has been made, especially in southern newspapers, of the fact that neither Mary-Lou nor Michelle O’Neill was able to field a question in Irish from a TG4 journalist during the press conference. Clearly Sinn Féin leaders, since they weren’t able to speak Irish fluently, were using Irish as a political weapon. To which I say, well spotted, guys. That’s why I personally never gave a damn about white rule in South Africa (I didn’t live there), at present I ignore the Black Lives Matter movement in the US (I’m not black), and I don’t waste a minute of thought on the #metoo campaign (I haven’t been sexually bullied). So thanks to fine journalist like Noel Whelan in today’s Irish Times for highlighting that hypocrisy. Mary-Lou and Michelle should be ashamed of themselves.
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