Sinn Fein gaining power would be worse than Brexit, says Irish PM
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
A Sinn Fein government would be as bad as Brexit and is the next “big threat” to face Ireland, Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, has warned.
The Taoiseach accused the former political wing of the IRA of being Eurosceptic and said electing it would risk the same chaos seen in the UK after it left the EU.
“This is not the change we need. It would be change for the worse. Like Brexit, it would make us poorer, less secure and less influential in the world,” Mr Varadkar said.
Ireland is due to have general elections by March 2025 and Mr Varadkar is concerned that Sinn Fein will build on its strong showing in the last vote and win power.
“The next big threat is not an external one. It’s an internal one,” Mr Varadkar said on Tuesday in a speech to mark Europe Day.
Sinn Fein would make radical changes to long-standing policies on Europe and trade, he claimed.
He said that Sinn Fein had opposed joining the European Economic Community and the euro.
“Sinn Fein has campaigned for a ‘No’ vote on every European Treaty put to the people in this State by referendum,” he said.
“While it has moved a lot since then, it remains a Eurosceptic and Euro-critical party.”
Mr Varadkar said that Sinn Fein’s manifesto committed it to withdrawing from PESCO, an EU deal pooling research funding on defence projects.
“If this happens, it will be the first time for Ireland to move away from Europe and away from integration. We would no longer be at the heart of Europe,” Mr Varadkar said.
Mr Varadkar’s Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were forced to form a coalition after Sinn Fein’s success in the last elections in 2020.
Irish Euroscepticism
A poll last year found that support for EU membership in Ireland was 88 per cent in favour.
Irish Euroscepticism has historically been strongest in Left-wing and Irish republican groups, such as Sinn Fein, which wants a united Ireland.
But the party has moderated those views and is not in favour of Ireland leaving the EU.
One of its arguments for Irish reunification is that the EU has guaranteed Northern Ireland could rejoin the EU as part of a united Ireland.
Its manifesto for this month’s council elections in Northern Ireland calls for planning for reunification referendums through “discussion, dialogue and negotiation” to “avoid any repeat of the Brexit debacle”.
On Tuesday, Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s president, said Michelle O’Neill attended the King’s Coronation in an “explicit recognition” that unionists will “still be British” in a united Ireland.
Ms O’Neill led Sinn Fein to victory in Stormont elections in May 2022 but has not been able to take up the post of first minister because of the DUP boycott of power-sharing over post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Mr Varadkar was Ireland's prime minister for the first time during the early years of the Brexit negotiations, during which Dublin worked hard to prevent becoming what it called the "collateral damage" of Brexit.
A 2019 meeting near Liverpool between Mr Varadkar and Boris Johnson paved the way to a deal on the Withdrawal Agreement, which aimed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit, which could put the peace process at risk.
