Sinn Fein hit by a double ‘Seamus Darby moment’

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

Politics is full of Seamus Darby moments.

To understand this metaphor you have to go back 30 years.

The Kerry team of that era was the finest team of all time.

In 1984, it was going for a five-in-a-row, underlining its utter dominance of Gaelic football at the time.

The only team that stood in its way was Offaly – a very good team but very much in the underdog mode.

And in the All-Ireland final in Croke Park, Kerry seemed to be cruising to victory.

However, Offaly had managed to say in touch and was only one score behind.

In the dying moments of the game a speculative high diagonal ball was sent in towards the Kerry goal.

Darby had not featured much for the Offaly team that year and had just come on as a sub.

He was big and strong. Using his body plus a hint of a nudge he was able to displace his opponent from position and catch the ball behind him, on the left edge of the parallelogram.

He hit a shot that arced over the Charlie Nelligan into the far corner.

It was the clincher. The game was over in seconds and – against all odds – Offaly were All Ireland champions.

Now read on…

Being a politics column, it’s not good luck we are celebrating. The very opposite in face.

How often do we see a political party ‘ar mhuin na muice’ (on the pig’s back) one moment and being unceremoniously dumped onto their backside seconds later.

It’s already happened with Fine Gael and Labour this year. Whatever bounce the parties got from the reshuffle and the Budget was wiped away completely by the Seanad byelection mess and by the continuing controversy over water charges; as well as the set-up costs of Irish Water.

The beneficiaries? Well not Fianna Fáil. It’s not going anywhere particularly fast at present, but then it has kept its nose clean of late which might just benefit it a little.

Sinn Féin seemed to have been the biggest beneficiary. But the moment we all started to pronounce the party’s rise as inexorable and unassailable was the moment we experienced a Seamus Darby moment.

An Irish Times poll conducted by Ipsos mrbi showed Sinn Féin as the largest party in Dublin with support levels of an astounding 39 per cent among the working classes.

That support should have been pushed through to the by-election in Dublin South West which should have been the party’s for the taking.

Instead, it was called out on a specific policy issue. In early September, the party had signalled that only one issue was a red line issue of the party – and that was property tax. But then when it began campaigning in the by-election, its candidate Cathal King said that the water charges change was also a red line issue. In the end, the party leadership was left with little choice but to say that it would not enter any coalition arrangement without the charges being reversed.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.