Sinn Fein eyes watershed win in Northern Ireland

Sinn Fein looked set to become the first Irish nationalist party to win the most seats in Northern Ireland at an election yesterday that tested the stability of the British region’s power-sharing governance and talks on post-Brexit trading rules.

Victory for a party wanting Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom would mark an historic shift 24 years after the Good Friday peace accord that ended three decades of sectarian bloodshed between those seeking unity with neighbouring Ireland and those wanting to remain part of the UK.

Support for Sinn Fein stood at an average of 25% across the final campaign polls, giving it a six-point over its nearest rival, the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), whose popularity has shrivelled over the past 18 months.

The main rivals are obliged to share power under the terms of the 1998 peace deal. But the DUP has said it will no longer do so unless the protocol governing trade with the rest of the UK following its exit from the European Union is totally overhauled.

Britain and the EU have spent months trying to agree on how to remove many of the checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, imposed under the protocol to avoid fraying the EU single market via the open border with Ireland.

But London has also threatened to stoke tensions with Brussels by unilaterally overruling parts of the agreement.

The outcome is also likely to reaffirm that a majority of lawmakers — including Sinn Fein — in the regional assembly favour retaining the protocol. A majority in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU in Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum that yielded a narrow countrywide majority in favour of leave.