Is UK’s future on the line?]
SINN FEIN: We’ll fix cost of living crisis (& a vote on a united Ireland within 10yrs) DUP: We’ll put £1bn into NHS (and work on scrapping Brexit border in Irish Sea)
THE fate of partying Boris Johnson may be decided in today’s local elections in Britain. But the stakes are much higher across the Irish sea, where the future of government in Northern Ireland is on trial.
And the UK’s entire relationship with Europe is also under threat, from Tory moves to tear up their own Brexit deal over trade with the region.
Draft legislation to override the controversial Irish Protocol is being prepared, and could figure in next week’s Queen’s Speech.
That treaty, negotiated by Mr Johnson, which keeps Northern Ireland in the EU single market with a new trade border with the rest of the UK, is backed by republican Sinn Fein but fiercely opposed by Unionists.
And in a sensational shift of tectonic plates, Sinn Fein is poised to win a historic victory, taking a majority of seats in the 90-member Stormont parliament.
The outcome could accelerate moves towards a border poll on a united Ireland. Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Fein Stormont leader and likely first nationalist First Minister, predicts it could come “within this decade” – by 2032.
The knock-on effect of events there could be even more far-reaching. If Northern Ireland goes, what is to keep Wales and Scotland in the increasingly Disunited Kingdom?
The Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it its full name, might end up presiding over the dissolution of the union.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein, once reviled by Margaret Thatcher and banned by her from broadcast media, is vigorously cleaning up its act to present a “modern” image to voters, focusing on the cost of living crisis, housing, and health.
Its core purpose of Irish reunification hardly figures in campaigning, with leaders insisting: “That’s not what this
I want to see unity in the country, but I’m focused on living costs
election is about.” The strategy appears to be working. The last pre-election poll put them eight points ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party, which effectively ruled the province until February, when its new leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson pulled the rug from under a power-sharing executive, and left Northern Ireland without devolved government.
He acted to halt the drift of Unionist votes to a new, more hard-line party, the breakaway Traditional Unionist Party, and to the older, resurgent Ulster Unionist Party. But he failed to stem the tide, with loyalist South Down party officers defecting en masse to the TUP’s Harold McKee in the last days of the campaign.
Worse, that latest polling only has them tied for second with the Alliance Party.
By contrast, Sinn Fein is consolidating its image as a pragmatic choice, rejecting the military rhetoric of the Provisional IRA with which it was closely associated.
Former IRA bomber, now policing spokesman, Gerry Kelly called for an end to republicans wearing masks at events to mark “Ireland’s patriot dead”.
He condemned petrol bomb attacks on the police following Easter parades as “wrong and disrespectful”. It would be unwise to over-interpret these signals as a softening of Sinn Fein’s primary objective, but they may be seen as straws in a wind of direction.
Emotions over a border poll run like the river Lagan under political discourse. While “the Shinners” seek to play it down, the DUP wants to highlight it.
Ms O’Neill told business leaders in Belfast people were not waking up thinking about Irish unity, but about living costs. She said: “I want to see unity in the country, but I am focused on the cost of living crisis.”
Two-thirds of homes in the province are heated by oil, which has doubled in price. Half the population could fall into
fuel poverty by autumn. Sinn Fein vows to give households £230 to help. Sir Jeffrey accuses the Republicans of telling the people of Northern Ireland one story and its Irish-American backers another. And he is trying the same political trick in reverse, by burying the issue of the Irish Sea border in a manifesto firmly fixed on the economy. He insists: “I have a five point plan to build a better future for Northern Ireland within the union by fixing our NHS, investing £1billion more in it, growing our economy, tackling the cost of living crisis and working to remove the Irish Sea border.” For disenchanted ultra-Loyalists, “working to remove”
MICHELLE O’NEILL SINN FEIN STORMONT LEADER
hardly cuts it. Sir Jeffrey is trying to shore up the DUP’s unionist credibility by appearing at anti-Protocol rallies.
Westminster has just thrown the Loyalists some policy red meat.
Northern Ireland Minister Conor Burns refuses to confirm reports a Bill to tear up the Irish Protocol trade agreement is on the way. But Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg let the cat out of the bag, telling MPs that the UK will “reform” the Protocol if Brussels does not.
Sinn Fein’s article of faith is: Tiocfaidh ar la – roughly pronounced as “chokky ar lah” – Our Day Will Come.
Voters in the province will decide today if it is any nearer.