After 25 years, this election in the North will show if voters are still in a time warp
WITH Assembly elections in the North this week, we face the prospect – as Winston Churchill said in 1922 – of ‘seeing the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again’.
Churchill used this phrase in exasperation at the fact that, as he saw it, Westminster had to deal endlessly with ‘the Irish problem’.
No matter how the election pans out, I fear that we will be grappling with issues relating to the political stalemate north of the border for some time to come.
As we get closer to next year’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, we find that the euphoria that followed that
historic deal has all but dissipated.
Granted, we have a peaceful society across the border. But we are still served up with the interminable wrangling that has dogged Northern Irish political life for decades.
Most observers thought that, once the agreement was signed, everything would be plain sailing. Alas, those who had a more
intimate knowledge and experience of Northern society appreciated that there was still a long way to go before the hurt and mistrust, built up over decades, subsided.
However, even experienced practitioners are sadly perplexed at how little the political landscape has changed in the intervening almost two decades and a half. Most of the leading political players are still stuck in a time warp.
Second fiddle
The people of the North go to the polls with little or no expectation that the situation will be any different after the votes are counted. Perhaps a relative political earthquake will occur, with Sinn Féin becoming
the largest party. But will that change anything? No! If anything, it could make matters even more difficult to solve. And the wider Unionist community will take a long time to get over the shock that, for the first time in the past century, nationalism, in the guise of Sinn Féin, will be in pole position.
Of course, the end result will come down to how the transfers behave. Will Unionist voters stay with parties backing the Union? Or, will some of those migrate to the Alliance Party? In turn, will Sinn Féin gain a better share of the floating vote?
If Sinn Féin becomes the party with the largest number of seats, the question then arises: Will Jeffrey Donaldson, or whoever is the leading Unionist, agree to the ignominy of playing second fiddle to the arch enemy?
Will a Unionist leader put up with becoming deputy first minister, with a Sinn Féin first
minister in the driving seat? Hardly likely, in my opinion.
On the other hand will Sinn Féin, if they win out, tone down the rhetoric about a border poll on a United Ireland, in order to
assuage sore unionists? Again, I think not.
Unfortunately, if the elections go as predicted, it seems likely that the dreary steeples scenario will continue for some time to come.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin implored the Northern politicians to restore the Stormont Assembly and other institutions after this week’s elections as soon as possible. He said ‘this is what the people want’.
I hope I’m wrong, but it seems to me that we are in for more of the same division that has dogged northern political
discourse since the turn of the century.
All of this is despite the fact that increasing numbers of opinion polls over the past five years or so have shown that the
vast majority of the voting public in the North are less and less exercised about the issues that most of their representatives are harping on about.
For instance, despite Mr Donaldson and the DUP going to war about the Northern Irish Protocol, it is not the most prominent issue on the minds of most of the wider public.
The DUP has hyped this issue and have given it an exaggerated status in the hierarchy of
political topics. But we know that, despite what DUP politicians say, most Northern Irish businesses are thriving because they are taking advantage of the ‘best of both worlds’ conditions granted to Northern Ireland under the protocol.
Divisive
Equally, Sinn Féin has repeatedly raised the possibility of a border poll on Irish unity, despite the fact that it is not on minds of most voters, other than their own die-hard supporters.
Mind you, keen observers of the election campaign suggest that Sinn Féin has toned down its rhetoric on the border poll in order not to scare floating voters. Most of the middle ground in Northern Ireland appreciate that such a poll would be very divisive at this time.
In between the big two of Sinn Féin and the DUP, we have the Alliance Party, led by the impressive Naomi Long. In the
last election, the Alliance party won eight Assembly seats and was seen as a coming force. Most observers will be watching to see if its rise will continue in this election. The party is targeting 11 to 12 seats.
I have had many dealings with the Alliance Party, especially under the leadership of John Alderdice and David Ford. Over those years, often during tortuous meetings on the political and constitutional
status of the North, I often thought to myself that, in any normally functioning political system, the Alliance Party would be the go-to political party for most of the middle ground.
Unfortunately, given the tribal nature of Northern society and politics, it was always difficult for the reasonable voices of Alliance members to be heard over the cacophony. I also felt that other politicians in the North tended to dismiss the Alliance people as being wellmeaning but naive.
It will be very interesting to see if, after Thursday’s vote, the middle ground and younger
voters turn their backs on the usual confrontational politics by choosing parties of the centre.
In the same relatively small middle-ground political space, the SDLP, ably led by Colum Eastwood, has also experienced a resurgence in recent times. Again, if that is sustained in Thursday’s vote it will be a clear sign to the big two parties that the voters are becoming more inclined to cast their vote on issues other than the historical political and constitutional battleground.
These days, the electorate across the border seems to be much more exercised by normal day-to-day issues, such as the cost of living and health service problems. Younger voters also tend to be more focused on issues such as equality, social justice, and climate change.
Last week, I travelled through Armagh and Down. Looking at the posters on the roadside poles, it struck me that there seemed to be a very high proportion of female candidates running for elections. Hopefully, that augurs well for the future. Is it a sign of more enlightened politics in the North?
The voters in NI have a big decision to make on Thursday. By their votes, do they allow divisiveness to continue, or do they send a clear signal to their political leaders that they have moved on from age-old shibboleths? Do they make it clear that the voters are far ahead of their politicians in their
thinking, and that they expect more from their leaders?
Time will tell.