Jack Horgan-Jones

particularly in the 2020 and 2024 general elections, 2020 where Sinn Féin were the winners of the election that didn't end up in government and 2024 where they pulled back from a really abysmal low in the local and European elections and saved their blushes.

But the common thread is that after two general elections and a host of local and European elections,

And Mary Lou MacDonald has not made good on the promise to lead Sinn Féin and government in Dublin and see the party also in leading government in Belfast and make good on progress on what is the core of the entire Sinn Féin political project, which is not a particular set of policies from left or indeed right.

It's Irish unity and a failure to deliver that.

Time and again, across multiple electoral cycles, notwithstanding her talent as a campaigner and as a performer in the Dáil, I think it is inevitable that any political organisation would ask questions of their leadership.

But to return to a point I was making a little while ago, where is the credible alternative?

Who is able to credibly say to Sinn Féin members and the wider electorate,

here is where this party is going, here is what is going to do in government, deliver that in a compelling way that mobilises support back to a level where maybe it was in the midpoint between the 2020 and 24 general elections.

Well, I mean, as someone who has to sit through leaders questions once or twice a week, you know, it is very much a case of a case of rinse and repeat.

You know, if it's not if it's not scoliosis, it's it's the cost of living.

And like there are obviously extremely meritorious topics for attention, but they do seem to be more or less interchangeable.

week in, week out.

But I suppose that, you know, you can abstract from that where the opposition thinks the government's weak points are.

And one of them obviously is the cost of living.

And there's some interesting stuff on the cost of living in the papers today.

So we'll stick with the business post for the time being.

John Rogers, who is an associate director at Red Sea, the polling company, has a piece on page seven talking about the disconnect between the GDP boom.

and then the squeezed reality.

So we saw this during the week.

We had those incredible surplus figures coming out on Wednesday where the surplus, which everyone had expected would go down due to the raid that the government has undertaken on cost of living, actually went up by, the projected surplus went up by 4 billion.