ALL over Europe, anti-establishment groups have surged in the polls by proposing alternatives to austerity. Meanwhile, ruling parties are closing ranks to defend the need for bitter medicine. One party has done well by playing both roles at once, as a standard-bearer of protest in the Republic of Ireland, and a partner in government in the island’s north.
That party is Sinn Fein, which was the political wing of the Irish Republican Army in the days when its battle to sever Northern Ireland’s links with Great Britain was in full swing. The party remains confident of achieving its strategic goal of being in government in both parts of Ireland by 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising against Britain. But this month, its north-south balancing act was teetering at times.
In Belfast, Sinn Fein (whose name is sometimes translated as “ourselves alone”) shares power with the Democratic Unionist Party in a broad coalition whose existence is mandated by the peace process. Last December the Northern Ireland executive agreed to implement cuts to welfare payments and public services.
In the Republic, Sinn Fein makes hay…
The Economist: Europe
