The mandatory coalition of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (FFFG) are guaranteed to govern the 26 counties beyond 2035. The interdependence of each party upon the other will ensure a continuation of this parasitic relationship unless a merger evolves.
FFFG have rubbished the notion that a border poll will be called by 2030, and in the current context it is impossible to imagine the UK Government (UKG) ceding to this request by bitplayers from the backwater that is the north. The UKG will not steer a course that will bring it into conflict with its nearest neighbour and EU member State, at a time when their global priority is to repair the EU relationships that were almost destroyed by the Tories and their calamitous handling of Brexit.
The Border Poll 2030 “project” has been lost. The change in NSF tactics both in the north and the south is an indication that NSF accept that a different approach is needed.
In the south, the privately schooled O’Broin appears to have been the only casualty following an electoral postmortem that should have seen more heads roll. Unfortunately for comrade Eoin, dressing up as a factory worker and talking patronisingly about the “working class” no longer cuts it with the electorate or it seems within the “party”.
NSF (Southern) appear to have internalised the criticism that from 2020 to 2024, they were “the worst opposition party in the history of the state”. Having successfully chosen to become the SDLP in the north, this ruse became their Achilles in the south where the decision to mimic FFFG saw the party shred its traditional republican vote and at the same time fail to attract the centrist voters upon whom their victory would depend.
The backtracking from a position where one could not distinguish between the establishment and a supposedly revolutionary party is happening at pace. SF, with the bizarre sponsorship of Labour and PBP, have become quite the shouty party. TD Carty has become as verbose and belligerent as he was during his Ogra days by disrupting the business of Leinster House in a manner best suited to the Student’s Union, one which is unlikely to convince anyone that the party of opposition could be trusted in Government.
The tactic of disruption, aggression and antagonism in the south is the antithesis of what the party is trying to portray in the north. The inherent contradictions of being in government in one part of the island and opposition in another part become more evident daily.
Mary Lou, who has become more vainglorious in defeat than Trump, excoriated Simon Harris for his handling of the building of a children's hospital in Dublin and calling out his signing off a tender for the now discredited BAM Group shouting that: “The national children’s hospital “fiasco” is rooted in Government incompetence”
Meanwhile in Belfast, The BAM Group, handed over the keys to a new maternity hospital to the Health service a mere 10 years after being awarded the contract under the patronage of a NSF Health Minister.
Evidently, what constitutes FFFG incompetence in the south represents NSF good governance in the north.
Being in opposition in the south for a further 10 years might afford NSF the time and space to learn how to ride these two horses at once but is also becoming evident that there are tensions within the party in the north relating to their inability to effect any real change through the GFA institutions.
The provenance of the current internal tensions in NSF (Northern) can be traced back to the St Andrews Agreement, when the DUP effectively renegotiated core elements of the GFA and which NSF conceded without a whimper at that time. The outworkings of St Andrews coupled with the NSF inability to work the northern institutions to the benefit of all communities or to promote an all-Ireland agenda has left NSF with little option but to retreat into base sectarian politics.
Despite the all the posturing that Michelle would be the first “First Minister for All” she is consistently being outplayed by the DUP and Emma Little Pengelley, in particular, whose political nous is without compare in the current Executive.
When the new, NSF Economy Minister was recently questioned at the Stormont Scrutiny Committee on the impact of the Trump Tariffs on the North, the socialist republican Minister was unable to give a straightforward answer to a direct question from a junior DUP politician. Having fluffed her lines on whether she was in favour of the north paying the 20% EU tariff or the 10% UK tariff, the DUP man rightly proclaimed that “her party's position is all over the place".
The First Minister for All, expressed her concerns that the tariffs created “instability” and represented “a race to the bottom” seemingly unaware that her party’s pre-election manifesto in the south committed the party to taxation measures not dissimilar to the Trump tariffs and included the creation of a grandiose “wealth tax commission” and the introduction of a “solidarity tax”.
When Trump eventually reaches the bottom, there will be a multitude of NSF politicos keeping a seat warm for him.
The DUP accusation that the NSF position “is all over the place” is not without merit and extends well beyond the subject of taxation. The leader of the somewhat ineffectual Stormont opposition benches highlighted a further disconnect between what NSF say in their manifestos and policy and what they do when in power. The NSF socialist Finance Minister O’Dowd, when queried, in the assembly on his party’s failure to devolve any financial powers to the Executive after their almost ten years at the helm of the Finance Ministry, NSF Minister O’Dowd retorted: “I am not here to respond to the Sinn Fein manifesto in relation to any matters”
Only a matter of weeks before this admission that the NSF northern manifesto is not worth the paper it is was written on, the socialist Finance Minister who was at that stage the socialist Minister for Infrastructure noted that his then Department's inability to pedestrianise a street in Belfast was as a direct result of British Austerity.
Citing “competing business priorities” as a further contributory factor.
It was only after he left this Ministry that his former Department announced that it would have cost the grand sum of £5000 to pedestrianise a city centre street and that O’Dowd’s successor had reversed his decision despite the pressure from the Belfast Taxi lobby.
In a further daring blow for Irish Freedom, Irish speakers in the UK now hold the same rights as Welsh and Scots Gaelic speakers to look at bus timetables in their language of choice. Liz Kimmins, NSF MLA and New Minister, reversed another of O’Dowd’s decisions and placed Irish language signage on a bus station in Belfast. In a rumpus which is reminiscent of the NSF Councillors in Belfast failing to install dual language signage at Andytown Leisure Centre a few years back and then blaming the DUP. NSF have once again successfully shifted the blame from their Minister who seemingly forgot about the parties bi-lingual policy onto the DUP.
Not unexpectedly, the DUP, once again, took the NSF bait and complained about the process and the cost to the public purse, thereby allowing NSF to portray this issue as them bravely standing up to the arch bigots of the DUP and not remotely related to the impotence of their erstwhile Minister.
The same approach, of playing to base sectarian instinct was on display, when the NSF member - who also happens to be chairperson of South Antrim GAA and CEO of the “peoples festival” - organised a rally to put pressure on Communities Minister Gordon Lyons and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn to do more to ensure the Casement football pitch is completed.
The aforementioned NSF activist who covered himself in ignominy during the ejection of Palestinian activists from a pro-Fatah NSF rally in the Europa Hotel in 2024 was apparently not aware that NSF hold both the Finance and Economy Ministries in NI and that as such are the only Minsters that can unlock the funding necessary to build a football pitch in West Belfast.
At the same time that the NSF proxies, the GAA and the community sector were crying foul about DUP discrimination and cursing the northern state that they now manage at the behest of the British Government, other prominent NSF members were telling the public what a great city Belfast was to live in. The best city on the island of Ireland and one where there is no longer a benign paramilitary influence or coercive control in the West of the City.
Mairtin O’Muilleoir, who recently re-entered the public eye after his much-publicised descent into embarrassing controversy following allegations about the nature of his relationship with those accused of being Romanian people smugglers, tried to take the Justice Minister to task on a campaign to tackle residual paramilitarism.
Mairtin proudly stated that he knows of no business in West Belfast that pays protection money, and I have no doubt that the businesses in West Belfast to whom he referred, do not pay protection money to the IRA, in much the same way that the Genco Olive Oil Company did not pay protection money to Vito Corleone.
Having made his millions on the back of other people’s toil, O’Muilloeir, who appears to spend most of his time in the States as a Human Rights envoy and bag man for NSF, and when in Belfast issuing legal writs against Republican Ex-Prisoners, bemoaned the fact that the campaign would hinder his ability to encourage investment and jobs in west Belfast.
On putting the skip rat from the Andytown News back into his box, the Justice Minister pointed out that the campaign had been agreed by all parties in the Executive including his own NSF.
That O’Muilleoir would go on a solo run is unthinkable: he remains a hugely influential figure in NSF and has unfettered access to Ministers in the Executive extending beyond NSF.
FFFG have rubbished the notion that a border poll will be called by 2030, and in the current context it is impossible to imagine the UK Government (UKG) ceding to this request by bitplayers from the backwater that is the north. The UKG will not steer a course that will bring it into conflict with its nearest neighbour and EU member State, at a time when their global priority is to repair the EU relationships that were almost destroyed by the Tories and their calamitous handling of Brexit.
The Border Poll 2030 “project” has been lost. The change in NSF tactics both in the north and the south is an indication that NSF accept that a different approach is needed.
In the south, the privately schooled O’Broin appears to have been the only casualty following an electoral postmortem that should have seen more heads roll. Unfortunately for comrade Eoin, dressing up as a factory worker and talking patronisingly about the “working class” no longer cuts it with the electorate or it seems within the “party”.
NSF (Southern) appear to have internalised the criticism that from 2020 to 2024, they were “the worst opposition party in the history of the state”. Having successfully chosen to become the SDLP in the north, this ruse became their Achilles in the south where the decision to mimic FFFG saw the party shred its traditional republican vote and at the same time fail to attract the centrist voters upon whom their victory would depend.
The backtracking from a position where one could not distinguish between the establishment and a supposedly revolutionary party is happening at pace. SF, with the bizarre sponsorship of Labour and PBP, have become quite the shouty party. TD Carty has become as verbose and belligerent as he was during his Ogra days by disrupting the business of Leinster House in a manner best suited to the Student’s Union, one which is unlikely to convince anyone that the party of opposition could be trusted in Government.
The tactic of disruption, aggression and antagonism in the south is the antithesis of what the party is trying to portray in the north. The inherent contradictions of being in government in one part of the island and opposition in another part become more evident daily.
Mary Lou, who has become more vainglorious in defeat than Trump, excoriated Simon Harris for his handling of the building of a children's hospital in Dublin and calling out his signing off a tender for the now discredited BAM Group shouting that: “The national children’s hospital “fiasco” is rooted in Government incompetence”
Meanwhile in Belfast, The BAM Group, handed over the keys to a new maternity hospital to the Health service a mere 10 years after being awarded the contract under the patronage of a NSF Health Minister.
Evidently, what constitutes FFFG incompetence in the south represents NSF good governance in the north.
Being in opposition in the south for a further 10 years might afford NSF the time and space to learn how to ride these two horses at once but is also becoming evident that there are tensions within the party in the north relating to their inability to effect any real change through the GFA institutions.
The provenance of the current internal tensions in NSF (Northern) can be traced back to the St Andrews Agreement, when the DUP effectively renegotiated core elements of the GFA and which NSF conceded without a whimper at that time. The outworkings of St Andrews coupled with the NSF inability to work the northern institutions to the benefit of all communities or to promote an all-Ireland agenda has left NSF with little option but to retreat into base sectarian politics.
Despite the all the posturing that Michelle would be the first “First Minister for All” she is consistently being outplayed by the DUP and Emma Little Pengelley, in particular, whose political nous is without compare in the current Executive.
When the new, NSF Economy Minister was recently questioned at the Stormont Scrutiny Committee on the impact of the Trump Tariffs on the North, the socialist republican Minister was unable to give a straightforward answer to a direct question from a junior DUP politician. Having fluffed her lines on whether she was in favour of the north paying the 20% EU tariff or the 10% UK tariff, the DUP man rightly proclaimed that “her party's position is all over the place".
The First Minister for All, expressed her concerns that the tariffs created “instability” and represented “a race to the bottom” seemingly unaware that her party’s pre-election manifesto in the south committed the party to taxation measures not dissimilar to the Trump tariffs and included the creation of a grandiose “wealth tax commission” and the introduction of a “solidarity tax”.
When Trump eventually reaches the bottom, there will be a multitude of NSF politicos keeping a seat warm for him.
The DUP accusation that the NSF position “is all over the place” is not without merit and extends well beyond the subject of taxation. The leader of the somewhat ineffectual Stormont opposition benches highlighted a further disconnect between what NSF say in their manifestos and policy and what they do when in power. The NSF socialist Finance Minister O’Dowd, when queried, in the assembly on his party’s failure to devolve any financial powers to the Executive after their almost ten years at the helm of the Finance Ministry, NSF Minister O’Dowd retorted: “I am not here to respond to the Sinn Fein manifesto in relation to any matters”
Only a matter of weeks before this admission that the NSF northern manifesto is not worth the paper it is was written on, the socialist Finance Minister who was at that stage the socialist Minister for Infrastructure noted that his then Department's inability to pedestrianise a street in Belfast was as a direct result of British Austerity.
My department has been operating in a difficult financial environment for a number of years due to underfunding and austerity by the British government.
Citing “competing business priorities” as a further contributory factor.
It was only after he left this Ministry that his former Department announced that it would have cost the grand sum of £5000 to pedestrianise a city centre street and that O’Dowd’s successor had reversed his decision despite the pressure from the Belfast Taxi lobby.
In a further daring blow for Irish Freedom, Irish speakers in the UK now hold the same rights as Welsh and Scots Gaelic speakers to look at bus timetables in their language of choice. Liz Kimmins, NSF MLA and New Minister, reversed another of O’Dowd’s decisions and placed Irish language signage on a bus station in Belfast. In a rumpus which is reminiscent of the NSF Councillors in Belfast failing to install dual language signage at Andytown Leisure Centre a few years back and then blaming the DUP. NSF have once again successfully shifted the blame from their Minister who seemingly forgot about the parties bi-lingual policy onto the DUP.
Not unexpectedly, the DUP, once again, took the NSF bait and complained about the process and the cost to the public purse, thereby allowing NSF to portray this issue as them bravely standing up to the arch bigots of the DUP and not remotely related to the impotence of their erstwhile Minister.
The same approach, of playing to base sectarian instinct was on display, when the NSF member - who also happens to be chairperson of South Antrim GAA and CEO of the “peoples festival” - organised a rally to put pressure on Communities Minister Gordon Lyons and Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn to do more to ensure the Casement football pitch is completed.
The aforementioned NSF activist who covered himself in ignominy during the ejection of Palestinian activists from a pro-Fatah NSF rally in the Europa Hotel in 2024 was apparently not aware that NSF hold both the Finance and Economy Ministries in NI and that as such are the only Minsters that can unlock the funding necessary to build a football pitch in West Belfast.
At the same time that the NSF proxies, the GAA and the community sector were crying foul about DUP discrimination and cursing the northern state that they now manage at the behest of the British Government, other prominent NSF members were telling the public what a great city Belfast was to live in. The best city on the island of Ireland and one where there is no longer a benign paramilitary influence or coercive control in the West of the City.
Mairtin O’Muilleoir, who recently re-entered the public eye after his much-publicised descent into embarrassing controversy following allegations about the nature of his relationship with those accused of being Romanian people smugglers, tried to take the Justice Minister to task on a campaign to tackle residual paramilitarism.
Mairtin proudly stated that he knows of no business in West Belfast that pays protection money, and I have no doubt that the businesses in West Belfast to whom he referred, do not pay protection money to the IRA, in much the same way that the Genco Olive Oil Company did not pay protection money to Vito Corleone.
Having made his millions on the back of other people’s toil, O’Muilloeir, who appears to spend most of his time in the States as a Human Rights envoy and bag man for NSF, and when in Belfast issuing legal writs against Republican Ex-Prisoners, bemoaned the fact that the campaign would hinder his ability to encourage investment and jobs in west Belfast.
On putting the skip rat from the Andytown News back into his box, the Justice Minister pointed out that the campaign had been agreed by all parties in the Executive including his own NSF.
That O’Muilleoir would go on a solo run is unthinkable: he remains a hugely influential figure in NSF and has unfettered access to Ministers in the Executive extending beyond NSF.
Belfast, like every city I presume, is a wonderful place for someone who has “more money in the bank than I could hope to spend in my lifetime” (direct quote) but it is a city where the poor, the needy and the vulnerable have been bypassed by the “peace dividend “. The jobs and investment that O’Muilleoir claims to have brought to the Belfast, are invisible to the naked eye.
The city centre is derelict with the exception of vape bars, phone shops and the “Cathedral Quarter”. The doorways of the empty shops provide limited shelter to the huge population of people who are homeless and afford a semi-safe space for people with addictions to satisfy their habits. CastleCourt, which was once the jewel in the British normalisation crown, meriting numerous visits from IRA bombing teams, is half empty, dirty and jaded. Belfast City centre is more abandoned now that it was at the peak of the IRA’s bombing campaign.
The disconnect from reality, displayed by the millionaire branch of NSF is symptomatic of where party currently find themselves.
Signing off on a first Programme For Government (PFG) for the north since 2016, the First Minister for All described it as “ambitious and realistic”. The 2025 to 2027 PFG, which took two years to sign off, is the first Programme for Government from an Executive led by NSF. We were told pre-election and since that voting for NSF would bring seismic changes for “families and workers”, and that having a NSF First Minister was groundbreaking.
The PFG owned by the NSF led Government has committed to “start to build” 5850 social homes in the north by 2027. Where the homelessness crisis is spiralling out of control, no budget or timeframe for completion was included. Conversely, the FFFG plan to deliver 33,000 new homes per year during this tenure with a multi-billion Euro ringfenced budget has been derided by comrade Eoin of NSFs Southern wing as unambitious and unrealistic.
Pivotal PPF, the most influential think tank in the north, in a critique of the new NSF PFG stated that:
we are not seeing the same ambition to improve public services and economic growth that is happening in England.
and noted that following a public consultation there was: “an additional commitment to an anti-poverty strategy.”
The obligation to develop an anti-poverty strategy was inserted into the NI Act following the St Andrews Agreement of 2006. It was not even mentioned in a First Draft of the new PFG, agreed by Four NSF Ministers.
All of the shit housery in the world, all of the deflection onto the DUP cannot take away from the fact that a NSF-led Government in the north, was taken to court by a collective of Human Rights organisations because of its failure to develop an anti-poverty strategy that was agreed In 2006.
The First Minster for All and the NSF Ministers who held this portfolio from 2020-2024 are complicit in this debacle. Shamefully, the Executive led by SF was found by a British court to be “in breach of its legal obligation to adopt an anti-poverty strategy”.
Again Colm Gildernew, NSF MLA, was apparently oblivious to these facts. Mr Gildernew has promised to hold the current DUPs Minister feet to the fire and ensure that the incumbent DUP Minister publish “in the coming weeks” a critical NI Strategy that his party agreed a mere 19 years hence.
In a similar vein, the NSF press office stroked the ego of the then socialist Finance Minister Archibald for successfully securing additional funds from the UK to ensure that health workers in the north would receive pay parity with colleagues in GB for one year. Maybe it was the passing of time or the enforced change in personnel in the press office, but the fact is that it was the former NSF Minister for Health who unilaterally dismissed pay parity for health workers in 2017. This was before assuming the office of First Minister for All in 2024.
Many critics of NSF have commented on the levels of cognitive dissonance that the party displays, and I have written in the past about the big lies that have created a border poll fever. I have reviewed my position on cognitive dissonance and feel that the comparison with NSF is genuinely unfair to the many people with mental health challenges who experience dissonance.
I am now of the view that SF have brought more than bags of dollars to Ireland and fat millionaires to the “James Connolly Centre Ltd” back from the US of A. The big lie politics of the border poll that dominated the political messaging on the podiums over Easter is now accompanied by the” defactualised politics” of the USA.
Just as Trump blames Biden, NSF blame the Brits and the DUP. Lying in politics in nothing new, but it did not creep into the body politic of NSF by error or omission. The acceptance by the media and the public of the outrageous mega lies such as “I was never in the RA” or “we are on the cusp on constitutional change” allow totalitarian organisations like NSF the latitude to cut loose from any pretence of facts.
NSF have taken a strategic decision that to tell the base what it is they want to hear, and to make that dishonest message plausible, is more important than telling the truth. Why would they not, when they face no scrutiny telling mega lies? The problem with NSF is what they are saying is neither credible nor logical. Despite how hard the NSF sycophants such as draft dodger Donnelly, flatulent Feeney and acrimonious Andree defer to the big lies and the small lies on behalf of NSF, the truth will remain the truth and sooner or later rather than being comforted by the lies, the public will become outraged by their corrosiveness.
Maybe the first step in the journey to a new Ireland
“Truth forever on the gallows and wrong forever on the throne”
⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.
 were spanked in the November...&p[url]=https://www.thepensivequill.com/2025/04/race-to-bottom.html&p[images][0]=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlj4WDED3HA17IdMfGeZvhDUOxgrCi1FTrohcw-XJSKHarCZ758e2etvw-bttrn0vDqSJTvX5Rm6gypPHW0Db8IcE5vDNtqyAKmzIFVjcYieQ6RoDxm5iYLY5peOLYa9jpLeotEBLe-Y7ydh8iECyc53F_MBYO7JhQOpEf8DHINWU8XEqc7OEYIWp3TXU/s1600/01%20Quill%20Hand.png){kind=link}
Another excellent piece from your pen Muiris.
ReplyDeleteYou should consider writing a book about their journey from radicalism to this.
I remain convinced had the British been fully aware of just how little the movement would settle for they would have moved mountains and oceans to bring about what exists today much sooner.
Thanks Mackers, appreciate the feedback. Looking back, I now believe that radicalism was purely "tactical" to be abandoned when the time was right. To capture that concept would require a book of biblical proportions.
ReplyDelete"A new Ireland "of the type Micheal Martin is pretty vague about. I listened to the BelTel podcast yesterday in where Martin clearly states he's not planning a 2030 border poll ( or indeed in 75 years time) but more interested in a conciliatory union of people. Fair play, he lived in the North for years so he has a nuanced view, but I'm just wondering that if FF/FG are not seriously interested what happens to NSF? Do they finally don John Humes clothes and work for an 'agreed' Ireland?
ReplyDeleteNot that I think there's anything wrong with that, I personally think it's the only way forward. Revolutions die with revolutionaries well remunerated. The money involved in the shared island fund is more than enough.
Hi Steve, a new Ireland as opposed to the old one, where the truth is not a disposable commodity. What form that Ireland takes is a matter for the people of Ireland. NSF proudly wear Hume's clothes, shoes and hat already speak of an "agreed Ireland" . There will be no agreed/united/ shared/ future Ireland without addressing the sectarianism of the north. Martin, for all his faults, at least calls that right. Sometimes I wonder had I stayed would I now have a cushy job and a holiday home
ReplyDelete