PoliticsAnalysis

The election countdown may be on, but it feels as if Northern Ireland is still getting used to it

With the DUP under pressure, Sinn Féin could overtake it to have the greatest number of seats at council, Assembly and Westminster level

Of all Northern elections, this is the one most likely to be viewed through the constitutional lens. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

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Freya McClements
Wed Jun 26 2024 - 06:00

It was the election that took everybody by surprise, and with just over a week to go until polling day, it feels as if Northern Ireland is still getting used to it.

Yes, the election posters are up, the leaders interviews are under way and the 18 constituencies are being well and truly profiled, but it’s hard to shake the end of term, summer-holiday feel. People are winding down rather than gearing up for an election.

“The sum of the parts is actually a very interesting contest, but it’s not registering as such because people think, we all know who’s going to win overall,” says Jon Tonge, professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool.

That winner, presumably, will be the UK Labour leader Keir Starmer. There are many polls out there, and they put Labour comfortably ahead; the debate less about whether Labour will win, but by how much.

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On this contest, Northern Ireland has no influence. Labour does not stand candidates in the North, and while the Conservatives do – the party is on the ballot in a handful of constituencies – it is not popular; at the last general election in 2019 its share of the vote was less than 1 per cent.

This means that, aside from some hoping to see the back of the Tories – which features in the election literature of multiple parties – Northern Ireland is fighting only local battles.

Add to this the first-past-the-post nature of a general election – and the fact that most local decisions are made in Stormont, not Westminster, because of devolution – and it means that, of all Northern elections, this is the one most likely to be viewed through the constitutional lens.

Take the example of Lagan Valley, where Jonathan Buckley of the DUP, Sorcha Eastwood of the Alliance Party, and on a very good day, Robbie Butler of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), are fighting it out for the seat.

“The unionist who can win,” is Buckley’s slogan; the only decision that matters, he is saying, is between a unionist or a non-unionist.

This pattern is replicated, overtly or otherwise, in constituency after constituency. In East Belfast, DUP leader Gavin Robinson – on a majority of less than 2,000 – is under threat from the Alliance leader Naomi Long.

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In Fermanagh and South Tyrone, voters know that, realistically, the only winner can be Sinn Féin’s Pat Cullen – who inherited a knife-edge majority of only 57 votes – or the single unionist candidate, Diana Armstrong of the UUP.

The breakdown of outgoing MPs is eight DUP, seven Sinn Féin, two SDLP and one Alliance. With the DUP under pressure in three areas, this creates the prospect of Sinn Féin overtaking it to have the greatest number of seats at council, Assembly and Westminster level – the “hat-trick”, as Prof Tonge puts it. Such an outcome would also provide an inevitable boost to those seeking to make the case for a Border poll.

“That would be a remarkable achievement, no one envisaged that the largest party in Northern Ireland at Westminster would be an Irish republican one not taking their seats,” Prof Tonge says.

“You’ve got the leader of unionism, whose very political existence is at stake in one sense, in that he’s defending a very marginal seat in East Belfast … and the future of the centre ground, to see if it can continue to grow or not.

“Then you’ve got the very interesting, very colourful, individual constituency battles, so there is a lot at stake.”

On cue, a pile of election leaflets clatter through the letterbox. The countdown has begun.

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