Sam McBride: 2020 has seen Sinn Féin reach its zenith, but also revealed its key weaknesses

February’s Irish General Election saw the party born out of the Provisional IRA, whose leader’s voice for years was banned from Irish airwaves, and which as recently as two years ago polled just 6.4% of the vote in a southern election, take more votes than any other party.

It was a stunning electoral triumph and even Sinn Féin’s subsequent failure to convince other parties to share power with it in some ways suited republicans’ strategic aspirations; they now sit as the official opposition to a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition and theoretically should be in prime position to benefit if the government fails.

And yet, so laden with calamity has this year been for Sinn Féin that February’s rebuke to the established order seems like a foreign land, with gaffes, crises and internal spats spanning either side of the border it exists to destroy.

To sceptical republicans, the upsurge in negative stories about the party may be explained away as evidence of the fear of the Dublin establishment at the prospect of Sinn Féin taking power. However, while the party does now face more scrutiny – the inevitable consequence of becoming a significant force – most of its debacles have been wholly self-inflicted.

Despite Sinn Féin having for years been the wealthiest party in Ireland and having had complete dominance of northern nationalism for close to two decades, there is evidence that the machine which brought it thus far is creaking.

Even in the weeks before February’s southern election victory, there were developments which alluded to Sinn Féin’s vulnerability.

Just a week into 2020, Sinn Féin U-turned on its pledge not to return to Stormont Castle with Arlene Foster until she had cleared her name over the RHI scandal.

Sinn Féin will point to having secured an Irish language act – a major, if grudging, concession by Mrs Foster – but the party did not walk out of the Executive to secure legislation which now appears to be of such limited urgency that after almost a year of devolution the bill, which has been written since January, has still not even been brought to the Assembly.

After three years in which key decisions could not be taken in the absence of ministers, and with the DUP and Sinn Féin observing an alarming drop in their vote last December, neither party had any credible alternative to restoring Stormont. That was a problem for both parties, but most especially for Sinn Féin because it had toppled Stormont and then kept it down.

Even Sinn Fein now accepts that Irish unity is a medium-term ambition and therefore not an alternative form of governance if devolution collapses.

The three-year absence of Stormont confirmed that Sinn Féin is stuck with the DUP, and the DUP with it, and both with Stormont.

The desperation of the DUP and Sinn Féin was exposed by the fact that they rushed back into government so quickly that they failed to negotiate who would pay for the billions of pounds of spending in the agreement they endorsed to restore devolution. That led to the new Sinn Féin finance minister travelling to London to plead for the money. Conor Murphy accused the government of “bad faith” and said he “will not accept this”. But when the Treasury said no, he did accept it.

Despite being one of Sinn Féin’s most experienced and competent Stormont figures, Mr Murphy has repeatedly floundered. In March, he claimed to have placed a “joint order” with the Irish government for a “significant” volume of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers. It later emerged that no contract had been agreed.

Mr Murphy also faced anguished criticism from the parents of the murdered Paul Quinn after his carefully-worded apology to them failed to state publicly that their son, battered to death by the IRA in 2007, was not a criminal.

Two days after February’s Irish General Election, Martina Anderson was coopted back into the Assembly. Despite Sinn Féin haemorrhaging votes in Foyle and her history of gaffes, the party immediately parachuted the outgoing MEP into Stormont rather than using the opportunity to build a new cadre of capable future leaders.

By July, Mrs Anderson was speaking openly about breaking Stormont’s pandemic guidance and helping others to do so. The following month, the former IRA bomber claimed that pensions for victims of the Troubles were mostly for “those who fought Britain’s dirty war in Ireland” and “mainly for those involved in collusion” – a claim so inaccurate that it was impossible for even Mrs Anderson to defend when challenged.

But the nadir for Sinn Fein was the funeral of IRA commander Bobby Storey where the party took part in a calculated breach of what Sinn Féin’s ministers had been telling the public was necessary to save lives.

With ordinary families having been restricted to a tiny handful of mourners, and the legislation specifically stating that no one should attend the funeral of a friend unless their immediate family could not be present, Michelle O’Neill said unrepentantly: “I will never apologise for attending the funeral of my friend.”

It was a baffling episode from a party which either genuinely couldn’t see the problem with putting itself above the restrictions the public were being asked to respect, or else wanted the public to see that it could do as it liked.

Over recent weeks, Sinn Féin has been at the heart of the Stormont dysfunction over the pandemic, flipping between attempting to cut deals with the DUP – sometimes in opposition to public health advice – to openly fighting with its partner in government. On the other hand, this year the DUP and Sinn Féin have been able to find agreement – uniting to reverse a key reform made in the wake of the expenses scandal and return to themselves the power to set their own expenses.

In recent weeks, Sinn Féin was found to wrongly have £30,000 of covid cash in its bank accounts and it has lost some members of its youth wing over attempts to control what they say, with a party figure showing up at the door of a young activist to tell her parents to ask her to delete tweets critical of the party.  

A Sinn Féin TD who then defended that, saying that he had called to party members’ homes to raise issues with their social media activity, was revealed to have shared Facebook posts questioning whether the September 11 attacks were faked.

Another Sinn Féin TD tweeted bluntly that both the Kilmichael ambush in 1920 and the Narrow Water attack in 1979 had “taught the elite of the British army and the establishment the cost of occupying Ireland. Pity for everyone they were such slow learners”.

After he apologised, last week Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald struggled in an interview with RTE’s Claire Byrne to explain why he had been chastised for expressing party policy which venerates the IRA. Eventually Ms McDonald condemned car bombs in city centres – a key IRA tactic used by some of her most senior colleagues.

Some of Sinn Féin’s problems stem from its extreme centralised control with decisions taken slowly by an unseen group.

Allied to that is what often appears to be an arrogant instinctive belief in simply ignoring a crisis until it becomes unavoidable.

The party now also suffers from a severe lack of talent in Stormont, with the SDLP demonstrably more fleet-footed than most of the often plodding Sinn Féin MLAs.

There is a sense that in the north Sinn Féin has grown fat and lazy, assuming that its dominance was secure.

It is now facing unease from some of its northern supporters at how it is propping up a broken Stormont system and is the most vocal opponent of reform – even though reform might benefit republicans.

Paradoxically, this year has seen Sinn Féin reach its zenith, while also exposing flaws and contradictions which may hobble the party’s grand ambitions.

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