Those NI local elections – all change

A day or so out and it’s clear that the Northern Ireland local elections provide yet another indication that whatever about the past the North is now in a very different dispensation from even a decade ago.

The primacy of Sinn Féin as the largest party representing Northern Ireland cannot be understated. The prospect of an SF First Minister and now the party becoming the largest party of local government point to massive, seismic change. Was the election last week an earthquake or a tsunami? Yes and no. No in so far as it was an extension of preexisting trends; yes in so far as those trends point to a very, very different future to the one that many envisaged.

Strange the manner in which some in the South appeared to believe it was best to ignore the results. Not sure that pulling the covers over heads is going to work here if we have a situation where SF is both the largest party in the Republic and the largest in the North. That has implications on how others perceive the island in terms of who is regarded as speaking (at least to a considerable degree) for the island and both parts. Of course, Northern Ireland is a divided polity, but if unionism spoke for that polity as its own and was regarded as doing so when it was the majority voice, then it is clear that others should they gain that sort of support will do so similarly, at least to some degree.

People will note that there are other strands, that Sinn Fein’s dominance isn’t an outright majority (that is greater than 50%) but similarly neither has unionism been hesitant to proclaim its sense of ownership. Yet look back at 2014 where Sinn Féin had a greater percentage of the vote than the DUP and the DUP/UUP and TUV had less than 50% of the vote.

The UUP’s Danny Kennedy argued that Sinn Féin ran too many candidates and in doing so didn’t give his party a chance. That is not the way electoral politics works, anywhere. And the point was made that unionists should be attempting to attract nationalists as against expecting Sinn Féin to shrink politically. In a BBC TV clip he actually having delivered this demand then complained that Alliance shouldn’t be saying what other parties do. Really, this level of analysis is bizarre and it tell us much about the attitudes with regard to the dynamics of politics in the polity.

But perhaps that’s due to the shock of the result. Vincent Kearney of RTÉ made the point that the SF result was a shock – ‘no one foresaw the extent of the SF surge – not even SF’.

I asked a senior party strategist and number cruncher shortly after the polls closed at 10pm on Thursday for his predicted number of seats.

“The feedback on the doorsteps has been very good and I think on a good day we could gain 20 to 25 seats,” he replied.

The actual gain since the last local government elections in 2019 was 39, taking the party to 144 seats across Northern Ireland’s 11 councils.

144 elected councillors from a total of 162 candidates.

It’s both pointless and arguably counterproductive to ascribe too much to a party but, in purely tactical and strategic terms, it does seem that SF is considerably more able than its rivals in other camps. 

Perhaps that too explains some of the following:

The DUP certainly did not see it coming.

Senior party sources had conceded in advance that they expected Sinn Féin to emerge as the largest party in local government based on its performance in the Assembly elections last May, when it emerged as the largest party at Stormont for the first time.

However, the facial expressions and body language of senior party members at the Belfast count centre yesterday suggested a sense of shock.

And of course Alliance had a good day.

As to the future. 

With the Ulster Unionist Party suffering badly, the Lagan Valley MP can say he is the undisputed leader of unionism and that he has the trust of the vast majority of the unionist electorate.

That could potentially result in him digging his heels in further and refusing to budge on his Stormont boycott.

However, the growing sense is that he is more likely to use this renewed mandate as a springboard to wring further concessions from the British government on the Windsor Framework to pave the way for a return to power-sharing, most likely in the autumn.

One has to wonder what further concessions there are from the British government. 

“It’s a question of when we go back and not if,” said a senior DUP source.

“The government knows what we need and is moving in that direction,” they added.

The British government last week signaled that it is committed to “providing exactly the protections that Mr Donaldson referred to.”

That’s understood to be a reference to new legislation to strengthen Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market.

This seems thin stuff, doesn’t it? And where does it leave the DUP given that in the past twenty four months the electoral map has changed so decisively, and continues to do so. 

Kearney argues that (and this is an odd echo of the Republic) Northern Ireland is now a three-party ‘state’. That the smaller parties, (and interestingly he includes the UUP and SDLP in this) are fitting to maintain any position; that the smallest parties are in real trouble (remarkable how many have lost representation and leaders); and that the DUP’s boycott has helped galvanise nationalist and republican voters. 

Difficult not to agree with an anonymous voice from unionism:

“Stability favours unionism,” said one seasoned DUP councillor.

“Instability undermines unionism and invigorates nationalism. The only way to get back to stability is to get back into Stormont and try to make this place work. If we don’t do that, in the long term we’re weakening the union,” they added.

Where is the will though? Where are the efforts to attract not just the ‘middle-ground’ but also nationalists? Where indeed are the appeals to stability from a party that seems to have made a fetish this past seven or eight years of going for the most disruptive and divisive options available at any given moment with no heed to the consequences and potential outcomes? 

Meantime this from Slugger is timely and provocative.