Irish Times ✏ After nearly 20 years playing the ultimate long-game, can the party leader transform it from one-time political pariahs into a party of government?

Jennifer Bray

Implacable and stubborn, ruthlessly pragmatic, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is now five years in the party’s top post, is also described by those who know her as possessing extraordinary stamina and self-belief.

Those who look at her with a more critical eye, however, judge her to be a wily opportunist desperate not to fall foul of the public, someone who talks a big game about change but has yet to prove she can bring it about.

Depending on who you ask, she was either plucked from obscurity and primed for leadership over 20 years, or a canny grafter who has made countless personal sacrifices to stamp her way to the top of the traditionally male-dominated arena of Irish politics.

One person who has watched her at close quarters says she rules Sinn Féin with as much iron discipline as Gerry Adams did before her, always keen to emphasise to anyone who needs reminding, North or South, that she is the boss.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Mary Lou McDonald Faces Her Biggest Challenge Yet, Five Years After Rising To The Top Of Sinn Féin

Irish Times ✏ After nearly 20 years playing the ultimate long-game, can the party leader transform it from one-time political pariahs into a party of government?

Jennifer Bray

Implacable and stubborn, ruthlessly pragmatic, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who is now five years in the party’s top post, is also described by those who know her as possessing extraordinary stamina and self-belief.

Those who look at her with a more critical eye, however, judge her to be a wily opportunist desperate not to fall foul of the public, someone who talks a big game about change but has yet to prove she can bring it about.

Depending on who you ask, she was either plucked from obscurity and primed for leadership over 20 years, or a canny grafter who has made countless personal sacrifices to stamp her way to the top of the traditionally male-dominated arena of Irish politics.

One person who has watched her at close quarters says she rules Sinn Féin with as much iron discipline as Gerry Adams did before her, always keen to emphasise to anyone who needs reminding, North or South, that she is the boss.

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

2 comments:

  1. No politician likes falling foul of the public, simply because bourgeois politics are more about mathmatics than ideologies. Instead of arguing a political position and bringing people across, the bourgeois incumbents look at the ambivallent mood of Joe and Josephine public and shift their political position accordingly, thus calculating the number of votes they will receive even if that means shifting beyond recognition their political beliefs, if they ever had any.
    The British and Irish labour parties are two examples. The British variant is unregognisable from the organisation formed by James Kier Hardie and others in the early 20th century. The Irish model well, what can I say? Perhaps an apt description would be, its founders, James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Richard O'Carroll etal would not cross the road today to attend a meeting. Or, a little more crudely, would not piss on those comprising the modern variant if they were on fire!
    As for Sinn Fein, again beyond recognition. What happened to the 32 county socialist republic? What about Brits out? Or, "we'll send them home in coffins"? In fact these days Sinn Fein (Provisional) rarely mention a united Ireland.
    The truth is, all these parties, once they enter parliament, any parliament in any country, they become servants of their indigenous capitalism. If the people, through reading capitalist news and information, do not agree with the party, then the party just shfts ground to suit the artificial mood, formatted by the media, in order the voting figures add up!

    Caoimhin O'Muraile

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    1. How democratic is it to ignore the public in deference to ideology?

      Is there not a risk of elitism coupled with a contempt for the citizenry?

      If ideologues start sounding and behaving like fundamentalist religions, would society really benefit from that?

      Does the messy, complicated mass of society with its fickleness not act as a brake on ideologues who might sacrifice it in pursuit of its ideological goal?

      I think a creative tension between the public and the ideologues where both shape each other is maybe as good as it is likely to get.

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