Sunday Business Post, February 4, 2007
Sea change in Northern politics
By Colm Heatley
Imagine a Sinn Fein election manifesto supporting the police.
Imagine the Ian Paisley soundbite saying ‘yes’ to government with
republicans.
When the North’s Assembly elections take place next month, the two main
parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, will be going to the
electorate with novel policies.
Sinn Fein and the DUP will use the results of the elections as a barometer
of their success.
Meanwhile, the two smaller parties, the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP,
are aiming to avoid electoral meltdown.
The Sinn Fein ard fheis last week, which voted in favour of supporting the
PSNI, has dramatically altered the North’s political order, creating the
possibility of stable government.
Ironically, despite insisting on the elections - and hearing Gerry Adams
calling on nationalists to support the PSNI - the DUP is the most nervous of
all the parties over the forthcoming poll. The party must explain to its
voters what the future holds if power-sharing with Sinn Fein is the new
political norm.
For the Irish and British governments, the elections are seen as a method of
copper-fastening the progress made in recent months and of bedding down the
peace process after years of instability and collapsed government.
However, even with last week’s ard fheis vote in favour of supporting the
PSNI, the elections come with a caveat.
Last week, when the British prime minister, Tony Blair, announced the March
7 election date, he warned that if there was not an agreement to share
power, the vote would be scrapped, even at the 11th hour.
For Sinn Fein, the most testing areas are west of the Bann, particularly
South Derry, West Tyrone and Fermanagh/South Tyrone. In each of those
constituencies, dissident republicans and former Sinn Fein members are
expected to stand.
In Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Gerry McGeough, a former Sinn Fein ard comhairle
member and ex-IRA prisoner, will be contesting on an anti-Sinn Fein,
anti-policing ticket. In west Tyrone, former Sinn Fein MLA, Geraldine Dougan
will stand, and in South Derry, it is likely that Paul McGlinchey, a brother
of former INLA leader, Dominic McGlinchey, will put himself forward on an
anti-Sinn Fein basis.
However, in Dougan’s constituency, Sinn Fein is running Martin McGuinness,
whose high profile should ensure that any personal vote Dougan may have
carried with her, doesn’t leave the party fold.
The electoral threat posed by dissidents isn’t likely to amount to anything
more than a protest vote and shouldn’t alter the outcome of the elections.
Even those dissidents standing against Sinn Fein admit privately that they
have only a slim chance of being voted in.
Sinn Fein is confident that its support will hold up and it is hopeful of
taking a fresh Assembly seat in South Antrim and Lagan Valley.
The party’s vote has grown substantially since 1998.
In the 2005 Westminster elections, it secured 24.3 per cent of the vote, and
it continues to attract fresh support from young nationalist voters and
former SDLP supporters.
Its stewardship of the peace process, in nationalist eyes, is regarded as
successful, and the peace process has generally boosted the confidence of
nationalist voters.
While many republican voters have misgivings about PSNI support, they are
likely to stick with Sinn Fein, rather than choose to split the vote.
Sinn Fein will be looking towards the general election in the Republic in
the coming months, and hoping that a good result in the Assembly elections
will provide a platform for success south of the border.
The party for whom the elections pose the biggest problem is the DUP, the
one party that insisted on the elections being called. This is the first
election ever that the DUP will contest on the basis that it will form a
power-sharing executive with Sinn Fein.
Last week, Ian Paisley said it was a matter of ‘‘regret’’ that the clock
couldn’t be turned back to pre-1969 Stormont, but that, in recent months, he
had made up his mind that power-sharing was the only way forward.
What Paisley and his strategists must decide is how to present that fact to
the unionist electorate. They must create a strategy that will not only
retain votes but, also, not split the DUP.
Having wrought concessions from Sinn Fein on policing, the DUP must now
figure out where the future of unionism lies.
If power-sharing with republicans is the future, then what is the raison
d’etre of unionism and the North?
It was based on the idea of a ‘Protestant state for a Protestant people’, to
quote its first prime minister, James Craig.
For some of the DUP’s heavy hitters, such as Willie McCrea, Nigel Dodds,
David Simpson and Jim Allister, power-sharing is a step too far.
Crunch talks between the two factions within the DUP are to be held next
week, but a split within the party is extremely unlikely.
What is more likely is that the leadership will play up IRA decommissioning
and Sinn Fein’s support for the PSNI as concessions won by the DUP’s
hardline stance.
Power-sharing will be presented as an opportunity to bring Sinn Fein ‘to
heel’, and the DUP’s role in the executive will be one of strong leadership.
For the SDLP, the challenge of next month’s election is more basic -
political survival will be viewed as a success.
Every successive election since 1998 has seen the party’s share of the vote
drop. In the 1998 Assembly elections, the SDLP polled 21.97 per cent of the
vote. In the 2003 Assembly elections, that figure dropped to 17 per cent.
In the 2005 Westminster elections, the SDLP vote held, but IRA
decommissioning and now Sinn Fein’s support for the PSNI may see traditional
SDLP voters switch to Sinn Fein.
Last week, the SDLP tried to make political capital out of Sinn Fein’s new
stance on policing, by claiming that SDLP Policing Board members ensured
Hugh Orde, as opposed to a former RUC member, was appointed Chief Constable
in 2002.
The strategy was to appear sure-footed and ahead of Sinn Fein in delivering
fair policing for nationalists.
However, the claim has led to threats of legal action from those former RUC
members and left the SDLP looking naive and unprofessional.
The party has too few well-known faces who can attract support. Its best
known figures, John Hume and Seamus Mallon, have long left the party and no
one has taken over their role.
The SDLP vote in Derry, the party’s birthplace, will be a key indicator to
the party’s future prospects.
‘‘Middle aged, middle class and middle-of-the-road’’ is a widely held
perception of the SDLP, whose main role throughout most of the Troubles was
to hold the line against militant republicanism.
Since the ceasefires, it has failed to find a new role for itself with which
voters can identify.
Similarly, Reg Empey’s Ulster Unionist Party still appears to be licking its
wounds after the trouncing it received in the 2005 Westminster elections,
when its vote dropped to 17 per cent.
In the 2001 Westminster elections, had it secured 26.8 per cent of the vote.
For most of the past five years, it has followed in the DUP’s slipstream,
allowing Paisley to do all of the running, and that doesn’t look like
changing.
All of the North’s parties have emphasised their commitment to
bread-and-butter issues, such as rates and water charges.
But in reality, the North’s voters, who have watched the Assembly lie idle
for years, won’t take too much notice of party policies on such issues.
For the first time since the peace process began, the elections will be less
about constitutional issues and more about the business of government.
