How the SDLP’s demise in the UK election has left Northern Ireland in two-party limbo

ALMOST 20 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland looks nothing like what starry-eyed dreamers may have hoped for back then.

After the mother of all sectarian headcounts in Thursday’s Westminster election, we now have a twoparty state. The DUP and Sinn Féin have all but wiped out the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. It’s impossible to see a way back for either.

For many years now, those parties have been a shadow of their former selves. Yet they had managed to hang in there, limping along to the end of the race. Now it is just a question of how long both of them can survive.

The glory days of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which once ruled the roost at Westminster, are over. It lost its two MPs, leaving it with no House of Commons representation.

In Thursday’s election, the DUP polled almost four times more votes than its rival – 36pc to that party’s 10pc.

“Unionists saw nationalists rallying around Sinn Féin in massive numbers in March’s Assembly election.

“They decided they wanted a big orange attack dog to take the green one on,” a DUP source told me at the Westminster count.

Likewise, Sinn Féin decimated the SDLP. Two of the SDLP’s three Westminster seats looked vulnerable – South Belfast and South Down. But few thought that Foyle, which Mark Durkan and his mentor John Hume had held since 1983, was in jeopardy.

The financial consequences for both the UUP and the SDLP – parties which were already struggling financially – will be devastating. They will lose more than £1m (€1.1m) in public funding over the next five years.

Both parties are now only of regional significance, with a handful of councillors and Assembly members to make their case. In the wider political landscape, they are bit players of little consequence.

In March’s Assembly election, luck was with the SDLP. The ball bounced well and in several constituencies such as Upper Bann, Lagan Valley, and East Derry, the party narrowly won seats which boosted its numbers.

That good fortune masked the real state of the SDLP, which was ruthlessly exposed this time. The party has previously organised endless think-tanks and research into what it’s doing wrong.

It is far too late for that now. The SDLP has the image of losers and it will never be able to shake that.

Republic of Ireland winger James McClean, local Belfast boxers Paddy Barnes and Mick Conlon, and a host of GAA and other local sporting personalities lined up to support Sinn Féin, tweeting or appearing in social media videos.

Nobody did the equivalent for the SDLP, which is seen as having passed its sell-by date. Like the UUP, it lacks a dynamic election machine on the ground.

Most significantly, there is no team spirit in the party. It’s a collection of elected representatives who are colleagues, not comrades. In Sinn Féin, the DUP, and Alliance, strong friendship bonds exist between their senior figures.

The SDLP’s greatest problem was that in most constituencies it has no connection with working class nationalists. And it is seen by many middle class voters as less liberal on social issues such as abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality than Alliance and the Greens.

The party has been very slow to respond to the liberalisation of opinion in the North and seems too concerned with losing the support of conservative veteran voters by changing policy.

At Stormont, the SDLP has a young, dynamic impressive team in its leader Colum Eastwood, and MLAs Claire Hanna, Nichola Mallon, and Daniel McCrossan. But the Westminster MPs who were defeated on Thursday were hardly dynamic characters.

Mark Durkan, Margaret Ritchie, and Alasdair McDonnell were three former SDLP leaders under whose stewardship the SDLP’s downward spiral had continued. Yet they were chosen to run for Westminster.

It’s impossible to see the SDLP ever being competitive enough to win back the three seats it has just lost. The only way forward for the party seems to be amalgamation with Fianna Fáil in the North, which could be a game-changer.

In the meantime, Sinn Féin has nothing to worry about. In the 2016 Assembly election, People Before Profit (PBP) was breathing down its neck in West Belfast and Foyle. In the former constituency, Sinn Féin trounced its left-wing rival on Thursday, securing a massive 27,000 to PBP’s 4,000.

Sinn Féin reawakened nationalists by bringing Stormont down. The big question is will the party now do a deal with the DUP to restore devolution? With a new Taoiseach about to be installed in Dublin, and a very shaky coalition government in London, both parties will be tempted to do nothing until the political landscape stabilises.

Sinn Féin’s more middle class voters are keen to get devolution up and running. They didn’t vote for a wreckers’ agenda. But the party is well aware that being in Stormont

implementing Tory cuts will alienate its working class supporters.

It may be content to sit back and let the Tories and the DUP get on with business from Westminster, while loudly protesting at the austerity which follows.

While this was a great election for Sinn Féin, the party will also be aware of its own weakness vis-à-vis the DUP. In March’s Assembly poll, the big two were neck-andneck on 28pc of the vote each.

This time, the DUP opened a colossal sevenpoint lead – it’s on 36pc to Sinn Féin’s 29pc. With its kingmaking role at Westminster, and its best ever vote, Arlene Foster’s party will be in no mood to rush into a deal with Sinn Féin.

The two big political power blocs in the North may opt for stalemate in the short to medium term.

Sinn Féin reawakened nationalists by bringing Stormont down. Will it now do a deal with the DUP to restore devolution?