Ok! A few further thoughts on “Irish politics” in 2020.

In order to understand political change, you have to examine how people themselves are changing.

You have to offer a social analysis and understand the cultural forces that are moving people.

Here’s something I wrote in November 2014, about how Sinn Féin would end up filling the political vacuum that opened up as a consequence of the Great Recession. That is what happened:

Myself and Andrea Horan were able to predict and analyse the Sinn Féin surge in 2020 on @united_podcast correctly, because we understand the generational, social and cultural forces at play, as well as the cohorts that both reflect and predict change.

In the aftermath of Repeal, I wrote that Sinn Féin would be the party that would benefit from the change that coalesced around that referendum.

This analysis was not humoured at the time, but that is what happened.

From a column on June 1, 2018:

Political analysis that has an "insider" stance, but that focusses solely on the parties and actors within, misses the real backstage: society.

I wrote about this in an essay in the aftermath of the 2020 election: 


(You can read that essay here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/can-hope-and-and-34033862)

Throughout 2020, I have been repeatedly attacked online because my analysis is misinterpreted as an endorsement of Sinn Féin, when I am actually just doing my job: analysing the social, political, and cultural forces at play in Ireland.

Here’s this week’s column, on how the rise of Sinn Féin isn’t actually about the rise of Sinn Féin in totality. It’s bigger than that.

(replies are off because anytime I write about Sinn Féin my mentions fill with insults and abuse ) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/una-mullally-rise-of-sinn-féin-is-about-a-generation-moving-beyond-political-establishment-1.4444745