Mary Lou McDonald had earlier this week promised Sinn Féin‘s endorsement of a candidate for the presidency would be a “game changer”.
She was sticking to that when she revealed on Saturday that the party would back Catherine Connolly rather than one of its own.
“This is a game changer,” McDonald said. “It’s game on.”
It is not clear if it will be a game changer, but it certainly gives the Independent Galway West TD her biggest boost of the campaign so far.
RM Block
Though early polling should be treated with a good deal of caution – most of the public are yet to engage with the presidential contest and it is likely they will not do so until well into next month – Sinn Féin’s move should push Connolly into being the front-runner in the race.
That will come with its own pressures and attention.
Connolly is likely to be questioned on her attitudes to aspects of Sinn Féin’s political identity – including its support for the IRA’s campaign. For Sinn Féin, it was a justified armed struggle against an imperialist oppressor.
However, most people in the Republic (including the Labour Party, of which Connolly used to be a member) viewed it as a criminal terrorist campaign.
[ ‘A champion for Irish unity’: Sinn Féin backs Catherine Connolly in presidential election ]
This is all history, of course – but it’s a rather important point of recent Irish history. As Friday’s announcement on Northern Ireland legacy matters showed, the past is never over in Irish politics.
Connolly now has a broad left-wing front supporting her, consisting of Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit, the Green Party and Independent left-wing politicians.
This was the point stressed by McDonald, who was looking ahead to the next general election, where she wants a similar broad left front to take out the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil duopoly.
If they can take the Áras together, the reasoning goes, they can win a general election together and form the next government.
In reality, that would be a heck of a jump – wielding power in government is rather different from being president – but there is no doubt that if Connolly won, the broader left would take enormous encouragement from it.
The other point that McDonald chose to emphasise was the centrality – from Sinn Féin’s point of view anyway – of the united Ireland issue in this election.
She insisted unity would be “at the heart” of Connolly’s campaign and that unity referendums would take place during the term of the next president. Whatever about that prediction – it is a presumption open to rebuttal, at the very least – it is not something we have heard much from Connolly on previously.
What does the choice of Connolly tell us about Sinn Féin?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the party backed her because it could not come up with a better idea. Connolly has, after all, been in the field for two months now.
McDonald was seemingly under some pressure to run herself, but once she ruled that out the party was confronted by its lack of a Plan B. Backing Connolly looks more like Plan C.
That doesn’t mean it can’t work out. If Connolly wins, it might certainly be a game changer.
But for Sinn Féin, it is not a strategy that is coming from a position of strength. Rather the opposite.
