Beware Sinn Fein’s Trojan horse

I got my first Irish passport a few months ago. It felt like a vaguely transgressive gesture because my primary British identity was forged on the Northern Irish border where many Unionists like me paid for their UK citizenship in blood. In the event, if anything, I felt proud of the way this document allowed me to articulate a dormant part of my identity. Sinn Fein’s remorseless rise in this weekend’s Irish general election has strangled that hopeful feeling.

Sinn Fein have surged ahead to top the poll of first preference votes, smashing the Republic’s dominant two-party cartel that has ruled Ireland in coalition for a generation. The vote share of this insurgent movement has doubled since the last election to 24 per cent, overtaking Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, neither of which have capitalised on a buoyant economy; and in Fine Gael’s case, in the shape of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, a good war on Brexit.