Inconsistent and dishonest - Sinn Féin’s bubble floats on hypocrisy
Any of us who get through this life without being, at one stage or another, susceptible to a charge of hypocrisy is indeed one of a sainted minority.
Any of us who can have a political career, no matter how fleeting, and escape a charge of hypocrisy is almost as rare as the male northern white rhino, the very last of which died in Kenya on Monday.
Occasional hypocrisy seems a part of human nature and, as Oscar Wilde asserted in circumstances not too different to today’s demand democracy, the only thing at issue is the price someone is willing to pay. Some tender souls blanch at a hint that they might be so uneven as to be accused of hypocrisy. Others seem immune and have a water-off-a-duck’s-back indifference to suggestions they might be more consistent, more morally even in the positions they champion.
Most of us can at one time or another be accused of hypocrisy. Fianna Fáil’s shameless U-turn on water charges is one integrity-squandering example; the Government’s lip-service on environmental protection while supporting unsustainable plans to increase food production is another. These, however, are little more than a fizzy aperitif to Sinn Féin’s sing-any-song-that-suits flexibility.
Two events yesterday confirmed the Sinn Féin bubble is insulated from reality in an unprecedented way. Early yesterday party leader Mary Lou McDonald attacked what she called the “utterly repulsive” southern media over the treatment of Martin McGuinness in the 2011 presidential election.
Publicising Martin McGuinness: The Man I Knew by Jude Collins, she described some of the treatment of Mr McGuinness as “absolutely obnoxious”. She described RTÉ as a failure of public service broadcasting. Whether this hints at an intention should she secure power is a valid and worrying question — especially as Sinn Féin misses no opportunity to try to rewrite the past in a way that has far more to do with invention than accurate, reliable history.
The calls for the resignation of Dublin Sinn Féin senator Máire Devine after she retweeted an anonymous post referring to murdered prison officer Brian Stack as a “sadist prison officer” is the latest example of this — to borrow a phrase — “absolutely obnoxious” behaviour. That it follows so soon after the Kingsmill scandal suggests a deliberate pattern rather than random, toxic dishonesty.
In the Dáil later yesterday Ms McDonald’s party called for “the immediate disbandment of the Government’s Strategic Communications Unit” and that “Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar ... appear before the Committee of Public Accounts... to account for the spending of public monies by the SCU”.
This suggests that in the one day Ms McDonald can try to redraw history to suit her needs but that the Government may not attempt, however imperfectly, to develop a joined-up communications strategy. Surely, that is a perfect example of deep, knowingly unprincipled hypocrisy. It is more than sobering to think that Sinn Féin may have real power after the next election but it is a terrible indictment of the other parties in the Dáil that that dire possibility even exists.
