The main town Ballymena accounts for about a quarter of the constituency, but the rest is divided between rugged coastline along with a few scattered hill farms of the high Antrim Plateau with most of the rural population in the valleys below.
In contrast to West Tyrone, North Antrim is one of the wealthiest constituencies in Northern Ireland although in recent years it has taken some major blows with the loss of Gallaher and some 1400 employees were recently made redundant by the innovative Wrightbus bus manufacturer.
Politically North Antrim has had the same family representant since Ted Heath came to power in 1970. Ever since the present MP’s father Ian Paisley Snr (then standing as a Protestant Unionist) edged out the Unionist candidate Henry Clarke by less than 3000 votes.
Clarke himself had taken over from distantly connected Phelim O’Neill in 1959 on some 95% of the whole electorate. These were the perfect representatives 0f “big house” unionism whose patronage Paisley loathed almost as much as he did republicans back in the days of the early 1960s.
It’s a measure of how far the big house, single party of government in Northern Ireland fell in just eleven years. Politically, Paisley’s successor DUP have been dominant here for most of the ensuing fifty-odd years with only the breakaway challenge of Jim Allister’s TUV to trouble them.
However, this parliamentary term has been a rough one for Ian Paisley Jnr who found himself suspended from the House of Commons for seven weeks after failing to register the fact he’d had several luxury family trips worth up to £100,000 courtesy of the Sri Lankan government.
It earned him the dubious honour of being the first British MP to have to suffer a Recall petition. In the event, 7,099 people signed it, but at 9.4% it failed to make the required 10% to trigger a byelection. He claimed at the time that “90.6% have accepted my apology”.
Other stories regarding money have followed Mr P like a perennially bad smell. Two things have saved him. Heavy support by Sinn Féin and the Alliance party made unionist critics wary of giving them what they wanted. And as a 62.2% Leave constituency, the DUP love his love of Brexit.
As for the others, Robin Swann former leader of the UUP is running to keep his hat in the ring in what was an uncomfortably tight Assembly race in 2017 in which he was nearly pipped at the end by the DUP’s third candidate, Phillip Logan by a few hundred votes.
Cllr Cara McShane came second to Paisley in 2017 but at 16.3% of the vote to the DUP man’s 58.9% this is another 200/1 shot. Other runners include Margaret McKillop (SDLP) and Patricia O’Lynn (Alliance) who are pretty much at the same level. Then Stephen Palmer (Ind)
Likely winner: It has to be Paisley. Any dip in his vote may be compensated for the by the fact the TUV’s Timothy Gaston is not running this time, but that could give Swann an opportunity to strengthen the anti Paisley unionist vote in time for an Assembly election that may not be far away.
Photo by Mary_R_Smith is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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