Editorial: Sinn Fein policy on the EU is subservient to its anti Britishness

Morning View

Sinn Fein is now saying it is euro-critical in its approach to the EU as opposed to euro-sceptical.

​Therefore, the party is not, as it seemed to be for a few years, europhile.

Anyone who accepts Sinn Fein’s new claim misunderstands its hard nationalist essence. It is an obsessively anti-British party that magnifies an existing but milder and intermittent anglophobia that is prevalent across Ireland.

Sinn Fein has exploited and fuelled grievance on both sides of the border, and will always be motivated, above all, by determination to make the island less British and to orientate it away from Britain. This was apparent when SF’s forerunners sought to help Nazi Germany because it was fighting Britain.

It was apparent after Brexit, when the party became the EU’s big pals in its determination to take advantage of the post 2016 confusion over how to proceed with the trade and other frontiers that arose out of the UK leaving the European single market. SF was very much pro the “rigorous implementation” of the NI Protocol, which would have made the Irish Sea border all the more pronounced.

It is apparent even in Mary Lou McDonald calling euro-scepticism “a British phenomenon”. Irish criticism of Europe, you see, is of a superior caste.

Yet republicans opposed Ireland joining the predecessor of the EU in the 1970s and Sinn Fein opposed the Lisbon Treaty that sought to strengthen the EU. But Brexit, which was supported by eurosceptic movements across Europe, was derided by SF, which saw a big chance to diminish the UK.

Anyone who can’t see SF’s over-riding aim is likely to make the sort of mistake that some observers did in 2019, when they thought gay marriage and other issues would be among SF’s non-negotiable demands for a return of Stormont. Of course this was wrong and instead a tribal goal, an Irish language act, was its unwavering demand.