The pong of panic

Sinn Féin have been doing their best for a while to wash away the ‘whiff of sulphur’ – and have not always succeeded. Still, who would have thought that they would decide to splash the pong of panic and the odour of incompetence on themselves in its place? This week’s events in Stormont may not mean much to the ordinary voter and may become, with the passage of time, little more than a footnote marking the beginning of the media silly season.

Sinn Féin may deny it but most observers are of the opinion that the talk of collapsing the Executive and having a new election originated from the party itself. Why they chose such a crude and public way of trying to win some concessions from the DUP’s new leader, Peter Robinson, is puzzling. Having party president, Gerry Adams, run off to Downing Street to ask prime minister Gordon Brown for help was particularly stupid. We can only assume that Brown indulged Adams’ plea for a ‘mini summit’ simply because it suited Brown to play the statesman for a while and get away from the weary toil of rising petrol prices and collapsing house ones.

Of course, there is absolutely no reason that Sinn Féin should not try to win some concessions from the DUP. Nationalists would be delighted to see the DUP house-trained. Unfortunately, it is very obvious that Sinn Féin are not capable of doing it and the last week shows how bad they are at the long, political game.

There are any number of questions about Sinn Féin’s behaviour. Why did they think that this wheeze might make for a good plan? How did they misread the DUP’s poker face so badly? Why did Gerry Adams go to Downing Street (a) at all and (b) without Martin McGuinness? Why did they then compound that mistake by having Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness go over with First Minister Peter Robinson on the first day of their new partnership (today) to meet – if only briefly, it seems – with prime minister Gordon Brown. Isn’t the whole point of republicanism to break the British connection, not underscore it?

Perhaps the biggest question though is why Sinn Féin did not go for an election. After all, the party has never been adverse to pointing out unionist intransigence to nationalists and hollering “Alabama!” Given that Sinn Féin has made so little progress on issues like policing, justice and the Irish language - issues that matter to its officer class whatever about the general public – it seems strange that they did not feel confident enough to go through with the threat of an election; an election that might have caused the DUP some discomfort from Jim Allister’s TUV and in which Sinn Féin would have tried to take a couple more seats from the SDLP. Yet they chose not to. Their preferred option was to prop up the DUP, whisper darkly to reporters, dither and allow their main nationalist rivals, the SDLP, to rabbit punch them all week long – something which Mark Durkan, Alastair McDonnell and Patsy McGlone happily did.

The goings-on at Stormont would suggest that Sinn Féin are still playing draughts while the other parties have moved on to chess.