Brexit looms large as N Ireland holds snap polls
Polls and experts predict this election will produce a result mirroring the 2016 outcome, meaning deadlock
BELFAST: Northern Ireland holds snap elections on Thursday in a bid to resolve a political crisis precipitated by Brexit as bad blood and allegations of corruption threaten to rock a delicate peace in the province.
Long-simmering tensions boiled over in January when deputy first minister Martin McGuinness of the Sinn Fein party quit, saying he could no longer work with First Minister Arlene Foster from the rival Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
That triggered fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, a semiautonomous body that has powers devolved from London over matters such as health, education and the local economy.
If fences cannot be mended between Sinn Fein and the DUP after the elections, the assembly’s executive could be suspended and the province fully governed from London.
In the May 2016 assembly elections, the Protestant, conservative and pro- British DUP won 38 seats in the 108seat assembly. Sinn Fein — Catholic, socialist and Irish Republican — won 28 seats.
Polls and experts predict this week’s election will produce a result mirroring the 2016 outcome, meaning deadlock. McGuinness resigned in protest over a botched green heating scheme, the breaking point after months of tensions with the DUP.
Foster had instigated the scheme when she was the province’s economy minister.
While deeply-engrained historical enmity persists between the parties, they have also been divided by Brexit.
The DUP backed the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, while Sinn Fein wanted the UK to stay within the bloc.
During a televised debate on Tuesday, Michelle O’Neill, who replaced McGuinness as the head of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland said the DUP’s pro-Brexit view was “absolutely disgusting”.
“I think it is disappointing and disgraceful that the DUP have taken a stance against the majority of the people here,” she said.
In Northern Ireland, 55 per cent voted Remain in the June EU referendum. Across the UK as a whole, 52 per cent voted Leave.
“Brexit sped into the political crisis because Brexit is a highly divisive issue between unionists and (Irish) nationalists,” said Jonathan Tonge, a politics professor at Liverpool University and an author of several publications on Northern Irish politics.
“Brexit is a disaster for Northern Ireland on so many levels,” said Tonge.
“The most disastrous thing would be the return of a border... which will greatly offend nationalists.”