Gerry Adams: a dinosaur with problematic stools?

He’s caught between too many of them

Gerry Adams, ex-TD and ex-leader of Sinn Fein has penned a summation of his party’s manifesto. It contains a lot in very few words.

He begins with a condemnation of Britain, blaming it for all the conflict and ‘a conservative dispensation on both parts of the Island’

Those are two big claims, offered without evidence. Yes, there has been a lot of conflict and there is an absence in Ireland of a dominant political party of ‘the left’. And Britain does exist. Correlation or causation?

Here’s another correlation with a hint, dare I say, of causation: Ireland’s population has grown 50% since the IRA began its long march to peace in 1993/94. Modern Ireland, the way its economy looks today, began to take shape in the post 93/94 period. In 1993, 1.1 million people had a job in the Republic. Today, 2.8 million people are in employment. Not enough is made of this astonishing story. Or the things that held Ireland back prior to 1993.

A simple narrative that paints a terrible country and that it’s all Britain’s fault ignores data, complexity, nuance and the possibility that observed phenomena might have multiple causes. I’ll leave others to judge the conflict bit and will only focus on the politics of all this.

Mr Adams laments, repeatedly, the absence of left-wing politics in Ireland. He says, again, it is all Britain’s fault. Really? Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that the traditional source of socialist votes, the industrial working class, never really existed in the Republic. Ireland has many reasons to be grateful for the historical accident that means today it has no decaying smokestack industries. No communities left behind by the disappearance of steel plants, car factories, shipbuilding and coal mines.

Maybe a lingering legacy of once-Catholic Ireland is an innate mild conservatism. Maybe it’s that Boston or Berlin question - choosing between the post-war centrist Germans or the mad capitalist Americans is not a path that leads to Marxist-Leninism.

Maybe we should observe the absence in Ireland of much appetite for red-in-tooth-and-claw socialism and admit we find it interesting but don’t fully understand its many and varied drivers. That would require humility and an intellect that embraces both curiosity and uncertainty.

Mr Adams says a vote for Sinn Fein will lead to emergence of proper left-right politics. He needs to get out more and observe the modern world. Left and Right today have little meaning, at least not one that previous generations would recognise. Is the Chinese Communist Party really of the old-fashioned left? Or a totalitarian regime presiding over capitalism with a twist? Can Putin be described in terms of left or right? And so on.

The horseshoe theory of politics is almost a cliche but seems to capture the idea that left and right in many countries are now beginning to meet each other. In any event, a two dimensional view of multiple political polarities is a typically simplistic view of the world.

The world has changed to the point where the labels Left and Right have little content. There is a new - dangerous - world out there but Mr Adams seems to have not noticed.

Mr Adams tells us what citizenship means, casting it in terms of a long list of human rights. No mention of responsibilities or taking responsibility. No recognition of the philosophical debate over what actually are rights.

Is free drinking water really a human right or is it just a basic need? At one point in his article I thought he said having a cleaner is a human right. I am probably mistaken.

Delivering human rights can be achieved, apparently, merely by labelling them as such. If, by contrast, we ask how we meet needs, we then have to ask, how? By whom? And, in particular, who pays?

Sinn Féin’s answer to that money question is, invariably, ‘somebody else’. ‘High earners’ and wealthy people of course. Not property owners - they will abolish property tax but introduce a wealth tax. On what? Property is the single biggest source of wealth in Ireland, by a country mile.

Mr Adams tries to deploy a well-trodden populist path and blames shadowy elites for many of Ireland’s ills. It’s a pretty feeble attempt at a classic Trumpist/Faragist tactic. But you can’t have it both ways: logically, it can’t all be the fault of the British and, at the same time, all the fault of a globalist elite. I suppose that elite cadre could be a British fifth column, all residing in South County Dublin.

That Mr Adams finds it so hard to go full populist speaks to his political bind. The populist playbook demands you mention elites and immigrants in the same sentence. With one leg firmly planted on the populist stool, Adams finds his other limb dangling in mid-air. A serious populist has to go full-on with the demonisation of immigrants. It could be to Adam’s credit that he doesn’t do this or it could be that he just isn’t serious. Maybe offering a proper alternative to the populist politics of the sewer is beyond him. He does have one toe, at least, in that sewer of course.

The world that Adams seems to want to inhabit is one where everyone earns a fair wage. With no definition of that word ‘fair’ and more than hint that he doesn’t like anyone who earns more than this.

Human rights will be delivered with somebody else’s cash. Presumably the cash provided by multinationals, high earners and the wealthy. The vibe here meets arithmetic: we don’t like the people who provide the cash but we assume they will keep providing it.

Those big companies with their corporation taxes and high earning employees will, with Sinn Féin in charge, face push and pull factors. Adam’s distaste will be the push and Donald Trump will provide the pull. What will happen next doesn’t require much imagination.

Adams admits to ‘some improvements’ in Ireland in recent years. That’s begrudgery on steroids. Stuck in Ireland of the 1960s and 70s, it’s as if he can’t quite believe that the Republic is now orders of magnitude better than the North. Better economically, socially and politically. With a tax and welfare system that does more redistribution than almost any other country in the world. No matter what the existing level of redistribution is, the answer to ‘how much is needed?’ is always ‘more’. Ditto on taxation.

Another part of the Sinn Fein vibe is to paint the Republic as a dystopian hell-hole. There are plenty of people in jobs earning a fair wage who might beg to differ.

Adams talks about a country that is tolerant, nonsectarian and respectful. Unless, of course you are a foreign multinational or aspire to having a few quid in the bank. Not much respect in evidence for these folks. Maybe it’s sectarianism reimagined for the present day.

The Cambridge Dictionary has nominated ‘manifesting’ as its word of the year. It’s a Dua Lipa-inspired thing, a bit of woo-woo that says if you imagine something hard enough it will magically come to pass. Adams would like us all to live in his definition of utopia. His assertion that a unified Ireland will manifest utopia inadvertently reveals his dilemma. With roots in the hard-left policies of the Republican past, the chosen route to a future Republic via a traditional socialist path just doesn’t cut it any more. Too many aren’t that bothered by unification, one way or the other. Too many are too busy just earning a few quid. Ireland has moved on and so has the rest of the world - the latter into a very dark place.

Adams protests that others are trying to write Sinn Féin’s obituary. There’s a touchiness here at variance with facts. Who is writing off Sinn Féin? A slippage in the polls, which may or may not be reflected at the only poll that matters, is hardly an obituary. Most commentators think the opinion polls are under-estimating Sinn Féin’s support. So why is he so sensitive about an imagined demise of his party? Maybe because he realises that it has begun a long slide to irrelevance and that the polls are, in fact, correct - with more slippage to come. In his darkest moments I imagine him asking himself: who, exactly, among Ireland’s 5+ million citizens is listening any more? We will no doubt find out at the end of the month.

Elections have consequences. The U.S. will rediscover this very soon. The mild dystopia that is non-London UK is the direct consequence of electing a series of frivolous (Cameron), hopeless (Theresa May), bad (Johnson), mad (Truss) and incompetent (Sunak) governments. Elections have consequences.