The SDLP wasted no time after last week’s English local government elections. Within hours of the final results, it released an image online of Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, under the words “A dark direction”.
A quote below it from SDLP leader Claire Hanna read: “Every day, we are confronted with reasons to break from the UK’s narrow, isolationist path and instead build a diverse, just and confident Ireland that everyone can call home.”
There is no doubt Hanna is personally appalled by the politics Farage represents.
But many nationalists also see reasons for hope in Reform’s electoral breakthrough. They believe their cause can only benefit if British politics repels centrist voters in Northern Ireland. A Reform-led government in Westminster might slash Stormont’s funding, leave the European Convention on Human Rights or call a snap Border poll to finally “get Brexit done”.
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These scenarios have been the subject of widespread musing since last year, when Reform’s polling took off in advance of a general election. That speculation might now be seen as prophetic, but it also reveals nationalism’s growing tendency to seek hope from external events. While that has always been true to a degree, Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum raised such hopes to unprecedented levels. But Scottish nationalism has imploded and Brexit is yesterday’s news, a non-event in most people’s lives, with Labour now moving to lower the sea border. So nationalism is transferring its hopes to the next possible deus ex machina: Farage in Downing Street.
Unionism has its equivalent fond delusions. Hoping the Republic will be bankrupted by US tariffs is an unattractive example. Everyone in Northern Ireland might usefully recall that the 2008 financial crash had no discernible long-term impact on anyone’s constitutional aspirations.
Unionism has a particular blind spot for Reform’s style of patriotic populism.
As last week’s results came in, DUP MLA Jonathan Buckley congratulated Reform and Farage, adding it was “refreshing to see common-sense policies resonate with voters long taken for granted and dismissed by the established parties”.
Other unionists despair at this naivety about Farage, who is no friend of the union.
The DUP’s definition of “common-sense policies” deserves closer scrutiny. Like Reform, the DUP has shifted from right to left on economic issues over the past few years without admitting it, let alone explaining it – this is how both parties deserve the label of populists. Both are remarkably light on ideology, beyond small-c conservative British nationalism. The DUP was infused with purpose when it was Northern Ireland’s largest party, and in the decades before when it was striving to become the largest party, but there is a palpable sense it no longer knows what it stands for since being knocked into second place by Sinn Féin. The instinctive attraction of Reform to the DUP is of people it relates to being in charge.
A more dispassionate look at Reform’s rise suggests unionists and nationalists are heading for disappointment. The first-past-the-post voting system, used for councils in England and Wales as well as for all Westminster seats, means that Reform’s most likely impact in general elections will be to lock the Conservatives out of office for the foreseeable future. Labour will also be damaged and may find it impossible to win outright majorities, but it will be the party to assemble and lead coalitions, with the Liberal Democrats as its most obvious partner.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have “sister-party” arrangements with the SDLP and Alliance respectively. While this has little practical bearing on Northern Ireland, it would be an ironic outcome from the rise of Reform, considering who is complaining or cheering about it.
The clearest threat to the union from this scenario is if a Labour-led minority government had to be propped up by the SNP, potentially reviving Scottish nationalism. However, this is a far more dangerous scenario for the SNP. It would have to demand another independence referendum as the price of co-operation and Labour would have to refuse. The SNP would look weak and end up voting with Labour on most occasions anyway.
Intriguingly, the Liberal Democrats’ price for coalition is replacing first-past-the-post. The party obtained a referendum on this in 2011 in return for governing with the Conservatives, although it then lost the vote. There has been significant interest within Labour in introducing proportional representation but the growth of Reform will have thrown all theses calculations into the air. For the moment, first-past-the-post still largely keeps Reform out of Westminster. Proportional representation would guarantee it a substantial presence.
The ultimate coalition question is whether Labour and the Conservatives might work together to keep Reform out of office. That currently seems implausible, just as it once seemed implausible Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would coalesce against Sinn Féin.
Perhaps British politics is heading in an Irish direction.
