Will Labour give in to Sinn Féin’s demands?

It’s not often that Irish republican party Sinn Féin hosts events in London, but the group included the UK capital in its post-election victory lap this week. Five of its seven MPs gathered in a dimly-lit hall in Hammersmith’s Irish Cultural Centre on Tuesday as the room filled with jubilant supporters, with many a Guinness in hand. There is certainly cause for celebration in the party: Sinn Féin has achieved a ‘perfect hat-trick’, as Belfast West MP Paul Maskey described it, becoming the largest group in local government, the Stormont Assembly and now Northern Irish party in Westminster. Retaining all seven of its seats, Sinn Féin increased its vote share in the general election by four points to 27 per cent.

‘We really had a tremendous result and we’re really, really proud of that,’ Mid Ulster MP Cathal Mallaghan told the crowd, grinning: ‘There may have been a few people in here who could possibly have voted in the election through postal or proxy, but we’ll say nothing about that.’