Britain | Seismic symbolism

Sinn Féin has become Northern Ireland's biggest party

Reunification is not on the immediate agenda. A big political mess is

A CENTURY AFTER Ireland was partitioned, nationalists have not managed to remove the border separating north and south. But in elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly on May 5th, they achieved something which would have been incomprehensible to the province’s founding fathers. Sinn Féin, a party which once was the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), has emerged as Northern Ireland’s largest party, leaving its rivals trailing.

The symbolism of Sinn Féin’s victory in elections to the devolved assembly at Stormont is hard to overstate. A state whose borders were drawn to lock in a perpetual Protestant majority has elected its first Catholic leader. For the first time, a pro-British, or unionist, party has been topped by a party which does not want Northern Ireland to exist.

There is no immediate prospect of Irish reunification. Sinn Féin, which was led for decades by Gerry Adams, a dominant figure in the Irish republican movement, deliberately fought this election not on the issue of securing a referendum for Irish unity, but on the rising cost of living. Its victory, with 29% of voters’ first-preference ballots, was secured on a manifesto which would have had the IRA men of the 1980s scratching their heads. There were more pledges about the economy than Irish unity. In the wake of the result Mary Lou McDonald, the party’s leader, did say she wanted to see a border poll within a decade and perhaps within five years. But she stressed it “has to be done in a way that is planned, orderly, democratic and entirely peaceful”.

The main pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), recorded its worst result since 1998. Its share of the vote fell from 28% in the last election in 2017 to 21% in this one, and it lost two former government ministers in the process. The votes that the DUP lost were largely gobbled up by the small Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), which tripled its share to more than 7%. That symbolises a hardening of unionist attitudes. The TUV is staunchly opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and unbending in its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the part of the Brexit deal which avoids a hard Irish land border by creating an Irish Sea border between Britain and Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin’s rise to the top was not the only dramatic outcome. The election saw an unprecedented share of the vote for the unaligned Alliance Party, which more than doubled the eight seats it had held in the 90-seat assembly. Its success confirms the emergence of a new bloc in Northern Irish politics, which is not defined by its support for or opposition to the Union. They want to make Northern Ireland work, whatever its ultimate constitutional status. Such pragmatism leads to another odd situation: the cause of unionism may now be advanced more effectively by parties which do not give themselves that label than by those that do.

That is because the DUP is the most reluctant to make Northern Ireland work in the short term. It pulled down the devolved government in February and has previously said that it will veto any new administration (a right it holds under the Good Friday Agreement as the main unionist party) unless the protocol goes. Throughout the campaign, it refused to say if it would accept Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, as Northern Ireland’s first minister. The DUP heavily hinted after its defeat that it would take the deputy first minister position if the protocol is resolved to its satisfaction.

But its ability to soften its stance is constrained by the shift of unionist voters to an even more vociferously anti-protocol party. The fact that pro-protocol parties from the nationalist and centrist blocs returned with a clear majority also cuts down on room for compromise. In 2024 the members of the Stormont assembly will get to vote for the first time on whether to retain the sea border: it will almost certainly do so.

A hint of DUP intentions will come within days when Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the party’s leader, must decide whether to give up his seat as a Westminster MP to take the seat in Stormont to which he has just been elected. In the wake of the election, the DUP leader declined to say if he would do so. Some DUP members expect him to stay in the House of Commons, a gloomy signal about the prospects for restoring devolution.

The British government may well be willing to pick a fight with the EU over the protocol. But that is neither certain nor likely to lead to a clean, swift resolution. If the Irish Sea border remains, the government in Belfast is unlikely to be restored for months. Most outgoing Stormont ministers were re-elected, meaning they can continue in a caretaker capacity for six months. But Northern Ireland’s system of government means that anything significant or controversial, or something involving the responsibilities of more than one minister, cannot be decided unilaterally. Such decisions must come to the full executive of ministers, which cannot meet while the DUP vetoes its creation. That means stagnation in key areas, with ministerial decisions vulnerable to court challenges.

At the end of six months, the government in Westminster is meant to call another election. If that fails to produce a substantively different outcome, there is likely to be pressure to alter the Good Friday Agreement, removing the ability of one party to block an administration being formed. Whether that seminal agreement is revisited or the protocol is reopened, contentious days lie ahead.

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