State of the union focus of election in Northern Ireland

After four visits to the polling stations in two years, and another trip due on Thursday, of course there is election fatigue in Northern Ireland. But still, most people realise there is an edge to this Westminster contest.

The great constitutional issue is at stake. Was the Sinn Féin surge in the Assembly elections three months ago part of an irresistible march forward, or can the Democratic Unionist Party halt or drive back the republican assault?

There are several other related and unrelated issues at play in the battle for the North’s 18 House of Commons seats, with Brexit one of the major matters, but it all can be encapsulated by paraphrasing a famous line of Bill Clinton’s: it’s the union, stupid.

DUP leader Arlene Foster made that clear when she launched her party's manifesto last Wednesday. "In the heat of politics it can sometimes be all too easy to forget what we are actually fighting for," she said. "Northern Ireland's membership of the United Kingdom is the most important thing to this party and the motivating factor behind all we do in politics."

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There it is in a nutshell. Since 2015 Northern Ireland voters have gone to the polls for a previous Westminster election, for two Assembly elections and for the Brexit referendum. It's probably fair to say that for many or most unionists, the biggest shock was not the decision to quit the European Union, but how unionists lost their overall majority at Stormont in March; how the DUP majority over Sinn Féin plummeted from 10 seats to one; and how Sinn Féin also came within fewer than 1,200 votes short of the DUP vote.

Narrow difference

Overall, the unionist share of the vote was 46 per cent compared to 40 per cent for Sinn Féin and the SDLP, but it was the narrow difference between the lead unionist and nationalist parties that provoked the strongest reaction.

As a consequence, much of the talk during this campaign is about a prospective Border poll on a united Ireland. Gerry Adams and Michelle O'Neill and many other Sinn Féiners have emphasised to nationalists that this is an opportunity to put a united Ireland more firmly on the agenda.

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood, a little reluctantly it seems – it wasn't in the party manifesto – rolled in with Adams by saying that yes, after Brexit is sorted there should be a referendum on unity.

Early on Friday morning, as the votes are counted, there will be concentration on how the 18 seats are divided up in Northern Ireland. There will be attention as well to the British result in case of a narrow outcome giving Northern MPs some leverage in the next parliament.

But perhaps equal focus will be on who won most votes overall, the DUP or Sinn Féin, and what is the margin between them this time, and does it tally with what happened in March. If it does tally, that will strengthen Adams’s hand in persisting in his demands for a referendum on unity within the next five years.

Bloody nose

Foster and her DUP colleagues have urged unionists to give the Sinn Féin president a figurative bloody nose. She wants the number of unionist seats and the overall vote to demonstrate that there is no prospect of a Border poll for the foreseeable future or, as she said, “certainly not in my lifetime”. Foster is 46.

It must be frustrating for the likes of the Ulster Unionist, SDLP and Alliance leaders – Robin Swann, Colum Eastwood and Naomi Long – that so much of the media attention is on Foster, Nigel Dodds, Adams and O'Neill and not on them.

And they do have worries because there is an expectation that this will be a good election for the DUP and a good election for Sinn Féin. In such an eventuality the middle ground on which they stand will suffer once again.

This has been a better election for Arlene Foster and the DUP.

In the March Assembly campaign, they were constantly on the back-foot over issues such as the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme debacle, pro-Brexit funding and her perceived insulting “don’t feed the crocodiles” attitude to the Irish language.

Since then she has softened her approach to the Irish language and its proponents without making a firm commitment on an Irish language act, while RHI is being addressed in a public inquiry that could take a year or more to conclude.

‘Blonde’

There was one serious gaffe when in a Sunday Independent interview she described O'Neill as "blonde", a comment that many thought wasn't just an allusion to the colour of the Sinn Féin leader's hair. It caused annoyance but didn't develop the same damaging traction as her "crocodile" comments.

Two years ago the DUP won eight of the 18 single-seater constituencies, losing one in South Antrim; Sinn Féin won four, losing Fermanagh South Tyrone; the Ulster Unionist Party won two: Fermanagh South Tyrone and South Antrim; the SDLP held its three seats: Foyle, South Belfast and South Down; and independent unionist Lady (Sylvia) Hermon was elected in North Down, a seat she is virtually certain to hold.

That was 11 unionist and seven nationalist seats.

This time Sinn Féin would hope to win six or seven seats, with the DUP aiming for nine or 10. Such an outcome would mean the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists losing some seats and Alliance leader Naomi Long having difficulty in regaining the East Belfast seat she so sensationally won from former DUP leader Peter Robinson in 2010 but lost in 2015. There is a danger that the UUP could lose both its MPs.

But elections always throw up some unpredictable results and there are six to eight knife-edge contests which could go either way.

Early in this campaign, Foster said unionists have “woken up” to the Sinn Féin threat and predicted a “marvellous result” for unionism on Thursday. She believes unionists have been “energised” by the potential threat to the union.

But equally, if unionism has kicked off the blankets and stirred itself, nationalism has hardly gone back to sleep. The Northern Ireland counts should be very interesting indeed.