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Unionism needs to build a pro-union majority, not fall back into finger-pointing and name-calling

Movement needs to focus on Northern Ireland that works and stops looking like outlier in UK

It was another bad election day for mainstream unionism in Northern Ireland
It was another bad election day for mainstream unionism in Northern Ireland
Alex Kane
Mon Jul 08 2024 - 06:00

It was another bad election day for mainstream unionism in Northern Ireland. It could have been worse. Indeed, it could have been catastrophic. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is still struggling with the impact from the shock downfall of former leader Jeffrey Donaldson, and with the continuing internal disagreements about the decision to restore the Assembly at the end of January. It lost three seats. It almost lost another two, with big beasts Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson just about holding on with pared-to-the-bone majorities.

In another extraordinary development, the party finally cut the last remaining ties with its founding member, the Rev Ian Paisley. His son, Ian junior, was defeated in North Antrim, the seat first won by his father in 1970 and then held in the family for 54 years. It was the moment of the election in terms of surprises. And it was also the moment when the DUP – as happened to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in 2001 – realised that there were no bankable seats left.

It was a disappointing day, too, for the UUP. It had targeted five seats but won just one of them. In the other four it actually underperformed, particularly in North Down, where the high-profile Colonel Tim Collins (he of Iraq War fame) limped in behind Alex Easton, an independent unionist who won the seat at his fourth attempt.

‘Sinn Féin being the largest Northern Ireland party in the House of Commons is the sort of stuff which spooks and demoralises unionism’

The greatest triumph of the day, on the unionist side, was Jim Allister, leader of the Reform UK-linked Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). This party has been a thorn in the side of the DUP since it was founded in 2007 (after Allister disagreed with the DUP decision to cut a deal with Sinn Féin), but it had never landed what might be described as a killer blow. Until Thursday, when Allister toppled Paisley. The TUV didn’t manage to cross the 50,000 votes threshold and remains a small party. The DUP and UUP heaved huge sighs of relief as a result.

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Yet the results highlight huge, if not exactly new, problems. The DUP has been damaged and on a scale similar to the damage done to the UUP in 2001 – which was followed shortly afterwards by the party losing all of its representation at Westminster. The UUP will be pleased to have won a seat, but there isn’t really much else to celebrate. And while the TUV is jubilant about Allister’s success, the party remains on the fringes of unionism, with a handful of local councillors and just one MLA.

[ How did Northern Ireland vote? A full breakdown of how each constituency voted in the UK election ]

One other consequence to note from the election. Sinn Féin, with seven MPs, is for the first time the largest Northern Ireland party in the House of Commons. It’s another huge psychological blow for unionism, following on from Sinn Féin winning lead party status in the 2022 assembly election and 2023 local council elections. It’s the sort of stuff which spooks and demoralises unionism and, more often than not, kick-starts another round of finger-pointing and name-calling. Occasionally it even results in another new party or offshoot emerging.

That said, unionists still take comfort from the fact that there isn’t clear evidence of a majority in favour of a united Ireland. The total unionist vote on Thursday was 43.1 per cent while that of nationalism was 40.2 per cent. Fair enough, but 43.1 per cent isn’t evidence of a guaranteed majority for remaining in the UK. And even if you were to split the total vote of the ‘others’ (16.6 per cent) down the middle, you just about cross the 50+1 vote required for success in a border poll.

That’s wafer-thin territory, the sort of territory which should push all of unionism to the same conclusion: you can’t expect to shore-up and expand the base for remaining in the United Kingdom if you spend most of your time squabbling over what it means to be a unionist, while disagreeing over the strategies required to present political/electoral unionism in a vote-attracting light.

Right now, the response to the election from mainstream unionism – the DUP and UUP – is to focus on seats and opportunities lost on Thursday, and then decide who, within unionism, is to blame. In the DUP’s case it lost one seat to the UUP and one to the TUV. But it also lost one to Alliance and almost lost one to Sinn Féin. The TUV and UUP won one seat each from the DUP but came nowhere close to winning seats outside the unionist fold. The only unionist who won a seat from a non-unionist was Easton in North Down – and he stood as an independent unionist.

‘The crucial thing for unionists to focus on: a border poll is inevitable, winning it isn’t’

Unionists have to find a way of winning seats from others rather than from each other. That’s the only way to increase seats and votes overall. But it has to be achieved by something more sophisticated than agreed unionist pacts which just reek of sectarian headcounts.

The other response – which embraces mainstream unionism, along with the fringes of unionism and elements of loyalism – has been to fuel the acrimony over the Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework, which left Northern Ireland partly within and therefore subject to EU regulations. The acrimony has delivered nothing, so unionism, collectively, needs to rethink how it can persuade the new Labour government and EU to understand and maybe even accommodate its concerns.

But here’s the crucial thing for unionists to focus on: a border poll is inevitable, winning it isn’t. The union won’t survive without a pro-union majority and Northern Ireland unionism won’t survive without the union. A long dead Belfast comic used to finish every show with the line, “Stop your fighting.’ That’s good advice for unionists: stop your fighting and focus on a Northern Ireland that works and stops looking like an outlier in the United Kingdom.

Alex Kane is a commentator based in Belfast. He was formerly director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party