It is strange watching people in the Republic puzzle over where Sinn Féin sits on the political spectrum following last week’s byelections in Galway and Dublin.
Does nobody think to look to Belfast, where sitting in government has located the party quite clearly on the centre left, with the emphasis on centre?
Republicans will say Stormont does not let them be themselves. They have to govern with unionists inside a British fiscal framework. Powersharing imposes other requirements for consultation and consensus that nudge all policies towards a mushy middle.
But the compromises reached under these circumstances are still revealing. Sinn Féin seems comfortable settling for situational Blairism, accepting combinations of centre-left and centre-right ideas. It will also adopt such positions unilaterally, and it might add pre-emptively, to ensure compromise. After a quarter of a century of devolution this simply appears to be where the party in office comes to rest.
Sinn Féin’s Good Jobs Bill is the latest example. The planned legislation will strengthen rights for workers and trade unions. Business organisations have begun sounding the alarm about its impact, unnerving unionist parties who had been prepared to nod it through.
Yet the proposals are more moderate than similar legislation Labour has just enacted in Britain. Labour went further on workers’ rights; Sinn Féin is going further on union rights but this is more about aligning with the Republic than raising the red flag.
Labour’s law is seen as a compromise between the party’s centre-left and “soft-left” (slightly left of centre-left), allowing Sinn Féin’s position to be gauged with delightful precision.
It is a position Sinn Féin has carefully chosen for itself. The Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill is at the heart of its manifesto and executive programme, designed to showcase the party’s social and economic philosophy in the first mandate where it holds the post of First Minister.
To put forward its Bill, Sinn Féin picked the Department for the Economy when the executive was formed – the first time this department has not been controlled by a unionist party.
When it has to hammer out a compromise with unionism, Sinn Féin can accept ending up on the centre right. For three years from 2012 it obstructed Stormont business to avoid enacting UK-wide welfare reforms. This crisis was finally resolved in a deal with the DUP where Sinn Féin agreed to cut corporation tax and reduce public sector employment by 10 per cent to “rebalance the economy”.
Sinn Féin’s nervousness over welfare reform was due in part to fearing criticism from left-wing rivals in the Republic, so its initial stance was more to the left than it might otherwise have chosen.
Water charging is another area where Sinn Féin fears southern reaction. It will not countenance any form of domestic charge, despite the disastrous effect underinvestment in sewers is having on the environment and on house-building.
Sinn Féin also refuses to raise tuition fees despite a financial crisis in universities. It keeps freezing bus and train fares, forcing the public transport authority to cut services.
The party’s response is that London should give Stormont more money.
Although Sinn Féin presents these as left-wing positions, they would be more accurately described as populism in a devolved context. Most other Stormont parties are little different.
The flipside is how relaxed Sinn Féin can be about plugging budget gaps with private money. It has championed the use of private borrowing by housing associations and has long supported granting the same power to the social housing executive, despite sniping from People Before Profit about “privatisation”.
[ There is still little clear indication of where Sinn Féin is goingOpens in new window ]
From the outset of devolution Sinn Féin ministers used Blairite private finance initiatives to build schools and hospitals. They later regretted it, but most parties at Stormont and Westminster followed the same path.
Away from mere questions of money, Sinn Féin regularly discovers its northern voters are to its right on social issues and adjusts itself accordingly. Two years ago it moved on transgender medicine. It is now learning it should not advocate raising the age of criminal responsibility.
Sinn Féin certainly aimed to be more radical in office and still signals that aspiration, but the realities of power have sent it on a journey of self-discovery. This is never acknowledged. Admittedly, it is a difficult message to sell to the electorate: “Send us to Stormont, so we can find out what we really believe.”
But refusing to admit the party’s obvious shift to the centre, let alone embrace it, looks like indecision at best and failing its own purity test at worst.
Perhaps Sinn Féin is quietly relieved that nobody in the Republic is paying this much attention. There might be nothing in its northern journey to be ashamed of, but it does make it plain as day that its natural coalition partner is Fianna Fáil.
