Belfast Gonzo on June 15, 2004, 12:00 am | Readers 0
JOHN Gilliland’s 36,270 votes (6.6%) were the best result for a non-tribal candidate in a European election since 1979, when Oliver Napier received 39,026 first preferences (6.8%) for Alliance.
This raises some interesting questions. For a start, is this a base worth building on? Is there potential for a true centre coalition, which would presumably result in the demise of individual parties? Was this a one-off experiment that, while achieving something, didn’t do enough to justify following through on? Or, as the UUP and SDLP lick their wounds and think about their long-term futures, is there going to be any kind of re-alignment of moderate politics in Northern Ireland?
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