Establishment Rising In Polls Because Main Opposition Is Too Weak

The latest Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll has Sinn Féin now in third place on 18% while Fine Gael are topping the polls on 25% followed by Fianna Fáil on 21%.

Sinn Féin had made it all the way up to 32% at one point yet the establishment was able to push back the tide of change due to the weakness of Sinn Féin and their fear of mobilising working class anger.

In the wake of their disastrous local election result rank and file Sinn Féin members told the press the party had been percieved to have “left behind it’s days as a campaigning organisation!”

Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens have overseen the worst housing crisis in history yet Sinn Féin, fearful that rising social movements would build forces that could challenge their left flank, sat and did nothing.

The Raise The Roof campaign led by ICTU and Sinn Féin haven’t called a protest since 2022 while homeless figures continue to rise.

But Sinn Féin have also been seen to flip flop on key issues from Palestine to immigration. They’ve certainly lost voters to the right but if they’d taken a bold stance against the far right they could have won left wing voters and raised the confidence of all those threatened by the politics of division and hate.

As we argued in the wake of the local elections:

“But key is the lack of focus on mobilising working class communities to fight for housing, to strike for better pay, to campaign for services - it has left people stewing and frustrated and ready to lash out.

It’s no surprise far right grifters have been able to get a hearing in our estates and then misdirect anger away from the establishment and onto other poor people. The whole situation has demoralised many workers to the point that they simply didn’t vote at all.

In a situation where the government had been able to use the immigration debate to cut off Sinn Féin’s rise, the small steps forward made by the socialist left are all the more remarkable.

We went out to fight for every single vote - activists like Madeleine Johansson were able to increase their vote, new candidates like Conor Reddy from Finglas and Darragh Adelaide in Clondalkin were able to make a breakthrough for the fighting left.

That’s why the arrival of a candidate from the Irish Freedom Party into the mix in North Clondalkin took votes away from Sinn Féin and not from Madeleine Johansson. She fights too hard for the community and is known for sticking to her principles.”

So where do we go from here?

Socialists have two duties - they have to help remove Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael from government but they also have to tell the truth about Sinn Féin’s weakness and fear of challenging the establishment.

These two tasks seem to run counter to one another but there is a way to solve this dilemma - case by case external support for a Sinn Féin government. That way you remove Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil but you don’t get suffocated by a rightward moving Sinn Féin.

If you don’t help workers get rid of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil people would be furious with you, if you subordinate the fighting left to Sinn Féin the result would be a train wreck when they let workers down.

Any approach other than case by case external support would be a disaster for the fighting left and an insult to workers - we should never join the ranks of professional politicians who sell sweet lies to soothe the working class.

We should tell the truth and treat our class as grown ups.

Sinn Féin are a middle class nationalist party - that doesn’t mean that every member is middle class but that the politics of the leaders represents a middle class fantasy that coalescing with the establishment can deliver for the working class.

It won’t. Labour proved that many times. You have to pick a side and Sinn Féin refuse to do that. By trying to be all things to all voters they’ve pissed off just about everyone losing votes left and right.

And so the prospect of a Sinn Féin led government is fading fast if things continue on their current tragectory. The Sinn Féin leaders need to start mobilising working people on the key issues like housing and the cost of living, stand up to the far right and accept that such mobiisation will also build the socialist left.

Ultimately we need to build a truly working class left that won’t hold back the anger of our class and will fearlessly stand up for the working class and all those who stand in our way or attempt to divide us.

You just won’t get that from Sinn Féin.