Ignore the election slogans, it’s plus ça change for Sinn Féin

Unusually, Mary Lou McDonald was nowhere to be heard on Sinn Féin’s election broadcast last week, the party opting instead for her polling officer, John Finucane MP, whose wooden delivery took over two minutes of screen time, leaving Michelle O’Neill just six seconds End when he asked people to vote for their party.

Standing on a platform for “real change”, Sinn Féin is poised to secure the post of First Minister on May 5 – although it is doubtful that much change can actually be achieved if the promises made to the electorate at the last choice made should be scrutinized.

In its 2016 manifesto, Sinn Féin pledged to seek “full control over income tax, social security, stamp duty, passenger tax, broadcasting powers and the Crown Estates.” It has failed on that score, although Treasury Secretary Conor Murphy told the BBC intercom on Thursday that he would like tax collection powers, adding: “We (the assembly) have not had a debate on additional powers since 1998.” His party also pledged to “remove the cap on domestic property valued at over £400,000 and introduce a derelict tax”. Neither happened.

Murphy also informed intercom that Sinn Féin is not a pro-choice party may be news to those who cheered when McDonald and O’Neill held up a placard atop Dublin Castle during the 2018 abortion referendum that read: “The North is Next”.

This time, Sinn Féin pledges to provide an extra £1billion for health – something they also pledged last time. Murphy’s three-year budget, still in consultation when the DUP collapsed the executive branch, proposed additional health spending that required cuts in other departments. The DUP’s Jonathan Buckley told the gathering: “Sinn Féin’s proposed budget would result in massive cuts in public services… The chief constable, school principals and indeed housing authorities have all described the budget’s severe impact. The draft budget has always only been supported by Sinn Féin ministers.”

In November 2021, Gary Fair of the Department of Education told a Stormont committee that education had faced “progressive underfunding”. Last year the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that the North spends less per capita on education than any other region in the UK. Sinn Féin has held the Ministry of Education three times since 1999. Last time out, Sinn Féin pledged to spend £525m on childcare and early childhood development. That year, Murphy’s budget proposed a departmental cut of 2 percent.

To be fair, one has to say that no party can keep every campaign promise. On Thursday, Murphy called Community Minister Deirdre Hargey’s decision on the bedroom tax a success. So it was odd that Michelle O’Neill wasn’t better prepared when she was interviewed by UTV’s Paul Clark on Tuesday night.

“The past two years have shown that even during a pandemic, the Assembly has been able to introduce fantastic legislation to support children and families dealing with autism (and) on the climate crisis,” she said.

The two bills she described as “progressive” were DUP bills, spoken by Pam Cameron and Edwin Poots, respectively.

Still, so far so good for the party, which has the momentum in this election and will try to get through May without disaster. O’Neill has managed to avoid any hint of controversy from the last mandate, largely due to the media’s lack of recent inquiries.

Yet no mention of the failure of some Sinn Féin officials to promptly return Covid-19 grants that had been sent in error, leading to the resignation of three party members, including Senator Elisha McCallion in 2020, or the funeral of Bobby Storey amid the pandemic that is sweeping the Party acceptance led to an undermining of trust in public health advice. The party also failed to take responsibility for the budget-less executive collapse in 2017, something it accused the DUP of doing in February.

A successful promise made by the party in 2016 was to ‘build momentum for Irish unity’; and Brexit gave him an excellent opportunity to keep the conversation center stage. In fact, a month ago, McDonald declared that the issue “is being discussed in every city and town in Ireland”.

However, last week when asked about a recently commissioned one Irish News Unity poll, O’Neill said that while it was “interesting,” she didn’t think “people woke up this morning and were thinking about it. I think people woke up this morning thinking about the cost of living crisis.”

“A Border poll is a passion killer,” Slugger O’Toole’s Mick Fealty told the newspaper. “There is no majority nationalist population on the horizon anytime soon.”

He may be right: according to the same poll, just 30 per cent would vote for a united Ireland if a referendum were held tomorrow, requiring a slight shift in Sinn Féin’s message to attract transfers from Alliance and Greens – crucial to the final ones Seat in key constituencies to place them ahead of their DUP rivals.

Returning to McDonald’s comments on Ukraine last week, which would have been easier to analyze if her party hadn’t recently deleted countless press releases from its website, including previous statements about Russia.

In particular, Sinn Féin has not deleted any online portion of IRA statements. Ironically, the party, which would prefer the media to stop asking about the IRA, shows little sign of leaving them behind.

So much for the election slogan “real change”.