Twenty-five years ago, I had the dubious honour of addressing 800 or so Sinn Fein supporters at a debate on current affairs at the West Belfast Festival.
Published: 4 December 2025
It almost seemed to me as if, apart from two kind friends, I was the only non-Shinner in the auditorium.
Early on in my speech Gerry Adams arrived.
I’d been warned he liked to be late to give worshippers an opportunity to applaud.
So I told them the glad news of his arrival, which enabled them to do so loudly.
At the time I had scaled the dizzy heights of being the Shinners’ most hated commentator, but I knew perfectly well I’d been invited because they needed for public relations purposes to prove that they were inclusive, so I knew I’d be safe because they’d be on their best behaviour.
I seized my opportunity to repeat for his benefit what I had been saying about his appalling leadership of his party and the republican movement.
He was — as I had hoped — barely able to contain his rage at this impudence as he denounced me.
A quarter of a century on, and where are Adams and his party now?
Well, they’ve clocked up rather a lot of electoral victories, but what power do they actually have?
In Northern Ireland, Shinner mean-mindedness, petty fight-picking, and negativity is alienating a middle ground that just wants an executive that does its job rather than fighting a proxy Gaza war.
In the Republic, control of which their hearts are set on, they have been unable to capture the government.
The best they could do when it came to the presidency was to be the main cheerleader for a coalition of malcontents that has provided Ireland for the next seven years with Catherine Connolly, someone with embarrassingly hard-left loathing of Western values.
The details of her trip to Syria in 2018 which implied support of a Russian-backed tyrant are just being revealed to an embarrassed electorate.
So Ireland has an annoying Michael D Higgins substitute without his experience in government, his love of racing, his poetry or his way with words.
It was comical to see the nervousness of the government about how Connolly would cope with a state visit from Voloymyr Zelenskyy, Russia’s chief opponent and Jew, at a time when anti-semitism is raging in Ireland.
Sinn Fein’s wheeze of appealing to the worst of their party by seeking the renaming of a park named after Chaim Herzog, one of Ireland’s most famous sons, a devout republican and bosom friend of President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, who is responsible for the statue in Sneem in his honour, is backfiring.
Eamon de Valera was so pro-Israel he has a forest there named after him.
Sinn Fein have become the hounder of the Jewish state – and Jews have been the target of bullies and bigots over history.
They are the virtue signalling party who appeal to the worst in their fellow man.
They speak of peace, and honour mass murderers.
Internationally, they have made Ireland famous as the most anti-semitic country in Europe.
It hasn’t gone down well with the EU.
It’s gone down really badly in Washington.
They’re just straightforwardly the nasty party.
Sinn Fein’s angry faces tell the story of how Adams led them in the totally wrong direction.
