So now the scene shifts to Stormont. As the dust settles and Colm Eastwood and Claire Hannah prepare to make their influence felt in the House of Commons, Irish eyes turn to the north.
All Irish eyes? We’ve been told more than once that the south doesn’t care about us, that they detest us in all our many colours, they just wish we’d shut up and go away. Contrary to this and even allowing for the mauling Sinn Féin suffered in the local and European elections in the south, there still is a feeling of good-will among the southern populace towards the north – a feeling of guilty good-will towards nationalists, who were abandoned 100 years ago and who have been consistently ignored since. As to unionists, there is a desire among southern politicians to appear friendly and open-handed towards them so that the two states can live in reasonable accord. The one thing they don’t want to do is give the impression that they’d be happy to see a united Ireland. When’s the last time you heard Simon Coveney say that?
Beyond that there are the words which helped fire Sinn Féin’s crocodile election : ‘No return to the status quo.’. Will anybody at the meeting called by the British Secretary of State be bold enough to ask when we will be allowed to see the official report of the RHI scandal? If we have to wait much longer, people will have forgotten what those letters stand for.
Sinn Féin will need to be very careful. Except they can get terms which satisfy their electorate – notably, the RHI report, a free-standing Irish Language Act and an end to the DUP’s duplicitous and high-handed manner – they Sinn Féin will suffer electorally. On the other hand if they make it clear that the punch-bag days are over, that mutual respect is a necessity not an option, and that every new initiative won’t find itself centred in a unionist area – if all those requirements are cemented in place, the Sinn Féin electorate will support their party. If they don’t, they might want to look across the water and see what happens when a party that has genuine commitment to its grassroots loses its way.
All this while coping with Brexit fall-out and furthering the growing demand for a border poll will be truly difficult. But then who ever said that politics was easy? And if that makes you feel too gloomy this grey Monday morning, remember that a union jack on the back of a donkey no longer guarantees election. Ask Nigel Dodds.
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