Friday’s by-election offers voters the chance to reject Sinn Féin’s ‘West Belfast economics’
WHEREVER I meet the people of Ireland, from all classes and walks of life, one clear message emerges about the Coalition’s highly touted economic success. People of all classes and ages are telling us that ‘the recovery is not our recovery’. Some of course are thriving. However, public- sector workers such as nurses, gardaí, the young teachers abandoned on lower pay rates by their trade union leaders when deals were cut behind closed doors, small business owners and high street shop owners, know nothing of recovery.
The apparent inability of the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition to understand their plight is fuelling a great wind of discontent.
Sometimes such winds of change can be transformative.
But on other occasions – such as the recent Arab Spring – they can carry countries and people in a very dangerous direction.
Many among the working poor have been hurt so badly by cuts inflicted repeatedly on the weak rather than the strong that they cannot, in good conscience, vote for the Coalition.
They have not, however, been able to forgive Fianna Fáil for their lazy role in the destruction of their hopes and future.
That destruction is too recent and too raw, and there are few signs of any significant change in approach by the once-dominant party.
Increasingly, those wounded citizens who intend to vote have been moving towards Sinn Féin.
For now, that support is still equivocal. Those who work for a living know that a future with Sinn Féin tax increases to fund spending increases on welfare is not in their interests.
In truth it is not in the interest of any member of our society.
IRISH citizens look at the devastation, the absence of jobs, hope and opportunity t hat t he North Korean economic policies of Gerry Adams have already inflicted in West Belfast.
Indeed, even under the watchful eye of the Provisional movement people are voting with their feet, and in the ballot boxes and they are saying no to Sinn Féin in Gerry’s own heartland.
We saw this starkly in the recent Westminster general election, in which Sinn Féin lost out to a different voice in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone constituency.
Their attempt to scupper the power- sharing agreement in the North was seen for the cynical, opportunistic pre-election ploy that it so clearly was.
Though it has been a somewhat neglected contest, next week’s by-election in Carlow Kilkenny will provide us with a fascinating test of the potency of the Sinn Féin rise.
To date most public commentators have focused, in a somewhat lazy way on a battle between the traditional dynasties of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Their voices however are fast becoming more wearisome and jaded.
When it comes to indicators as to how the narrative and the plot in the great general election play of 2016 will develop, Carlow-Kilkenny may provide us with an intriguing prologue.
The performance of Sinn Féin will go a long way towards indicating whether i t has the capacity to harness the discontent of those who are not experiencing the recovery of the insiders.
To date Sinn Féin have been faring well in the polls.
However, where they have clearly failed is to articulate any economic strategy beyond the economics of West Belfast.
There has been a noticeable absence from the Sinn Féin campaign of any sense of a plan or a policy. Instead were are fed on large dollops of negatives and complaint.
If the party wishes to be in government its leaders have a responsibility to say how they would govern the country in a different manner to the current Coalition policies.
It is safe to be in office rather than in power, as in Belfast, where they are subsidised by the UK taxpayer.
In the Republic though, we have to go it alone. It’s called independence, and if independence is to be maintained, you need responsible government – not rhetoric.
The voters may be fed up of the tired old dinosaurs of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. But the voters would be wise, before moving towards Sinn Féin, to call Gerry Adams and his cohorts out of the economic closet and ask them how would they create indigenous jobs in small rural Irish towns.
To date Sinn Féin has had little to say on such matters in Carlow-Kilkenny or elsewhere for that matter.
UNTIL the party has something to offer it is fatally open to the suggestion that the only economic policy i t has, when it comes to job creation, is to tax jobs so they can, in their own political interests, fund a welfare based economy that will keep people in permanent poverty and keep them in permanent power.
It didn’t work in West Belfast and it won’t work here.
Instead, Sinn Féin’s ropey economics will, in the long run, result in welfare cuts because there will be no jobs to fund welfare.
That is the economic reality that Sinn Féin refuses to confront. In order to spread around the wealth, it must be created first. Sinn Féin policies will stifle this urgently needed wealth creation.
The Coalition faces its own difficulties too. The new economic fairytale Enda has learnt off by heart is that the Coalition has fixed a broken economy. Whatever about the truth or otherwise of such a claim – and technically, given the devastation it inherited, the Coalition cartel can claim some credit for stabilisation even if it was directed and managed by the Troika – it does not deal with the new key issue of Irish politics.
The new great task in this regard is to fix a broken people, as well as a broken economy.
Carlow-Kilkenny will offer voters a real opportunity to let the Taoiseach know how much work he has to do in that regard.
In electoral terms it is the political equivalent of the first round of the championship.
All eyes may for now be on the old politics style squabble between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the Sinn Fein threat.
However, first-round championship matches can throw up an occasional shock if a big team is underprepared, over confident and lazy.
I will be hoping that another party, a new option, might just provide us with a surprise that would not at all please Enda Kenny, Fianna Fáil or Sinn Féin next week.