Would you believe it? It’s been one year since the 2017 Assembly Election. If you want to relive the coverage of it, thanks to Youtube somebody has uploaded the BBC’s coverage here . 65% of us went out in awful weather to cast a ballot for the Assembly which is still actually yet to pass any legislation. We all know about the results, a surging Nationalism, Unionism without a majority and the Alliance Party securing strong gains. A year …
“Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.” Attributed to Albert Einstein Thought I’d start this piece with a useful boss-quote, for a couple of small but intriguing items. First is the news that Sinn Fein’s former Finance Minister not only got his sums wrong on a claim in his election poster, but is going all Boris Johnson and pretending that there’s nothing wrong. In huge lettering …
[slideshare id=74649766&doc=niassemblyelectionreview-170407152022] So on Wednesday night, I gave this round-up presentation on the Northern Ireland Assembly election to the Wales Governance Centre at the University of Cardiff. It has a fairly bleak title, for which I begin by laying out the pretext. It also contains a slide in which I look in detail at the RHI story and how strangely most of the key matters relating to it were resolved well before the election took place (including the source of …
So one week till the deadline closes on the formation of the next Executive, or rather the appointment of a new First Minister and deputy First Minister. A new Executive (and that piece of comedic fiction, the Programme For Government) is another piece of work on top of that. Gerry Adams said at the weekend there was no reason to doubt Arlene Foster’s innocence in relation to RHI: which may or may not be a concession ahead of a final …
In a deeply divided society such as Northern Ireland political developments tend to be filtered through a number of lenses and experienced at a number of levels – arguably to an even greater degree than is the case in other, less fractious countries. Brexit has no doubt played a major role in mobilizing Northern nationalism, which has swung from one of its worst electoral results to one of its best in less than a year. Of course, perceptions of the …
With the plethora of positive comment in that direction, you’d certainly think was already coming in the post. It’s certainly good to get the subject out on the table (even if the party politics of it obscures more than it reveals of the subject). It’s good to know Fianna Fail is working on a 12 point plan (although the proper time to judge the worthiness of any such plan will come when they actually release it). The something in the …
Unless there is a snap Assembly or Westminster election called within the next 18 months, this month’s Assembly Election will be the last Northern Ireland election to be fought under the existing 18 constituency map. Under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act of 2011, the number of Westminster constituencies will fall from 650 to 600, and as a result of this there will be a reduction in the number of Northern Ireland constituencies by one, from 18 to 17. …
There are no two ways of looking at last week’s Assembly election results: mission accomplished for Sinn Féin. Manners have been put on Arlene Foster. Foster called the unionist faithful to rally around her to ward off the nationalist crocodile, the bastard child of Papism and the IRA, but in doing so she built a temple to Sobek, the Egyptian croc-headed god of fertility and the army, at which lapsed Catholics turned out in near-record numbers to worship. It is …
Last #SluggerReport for a while in which I look at various of the dilemmas facing the political parties after another deadlocked Assembly. Unionism has some legitimate grievances, not least over how the core story of RHI was handled (sins of omission largely) but as Eilis O’Hanlon notes here, getting grumpy and slagging off nationalist culture is a game with limited returns: …the only surprise about DUP leader Arlene Foster’s apology for referring to supporters of an Irish Language Act* as …
Last Thursday changed everything and nothing for the DUP. Gone is the petition of concern. Gone too is the large buffer of seats with Sinn Fein. What hasn’t change is the outcome. They still have the First Minister’s position and with the UUP’s downsizing are more dominant in unionism. On the other hand, in the course of less than a year, Mrs Foster has overturned recent patterns of nationalist and unionist turnout in a way that has cost her both in seats and …
The increase in the Nationalist vote at last week’s Assembly Election came as a surprise to many commentators. However, it is worth bearing in mind that support for the SDLP and Sinn Féin amongst the Catholic population of Northern Ireland was at a historic low in 2016, and therefore the increase in the Nationalist vote was starting from a low base. After last year’s Assembly election, I wrote about how the support for the SDLP and Sinn Féin amongst Northern …
“I decided some time ago that if the G.O.M. [Grand Old Man/William Gladstone] went for Home Rule, the Orange card would be the one to play. Please God it may turn out the ace of trumps and not the two.” So wrote Lord Randolph Churchill in a letter to Lord Justice Fitzgibbon on 16th February 1886 as the first Home Rule crisis came to the fore. In playing the “Orange card” his plan was to mobilise Ulster Protestants by tapping …
This item went out on Tuesday on the Newsmakers Programme on TRT World in Istanbul, and the following is the first of a two-part conversation with the host of the great Polling Matters podcast, Keiran Pedley. Over to you in the comment zone… Mick FealtyMick 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. …
Sinn Fein has delivered an object lesson in how to do disruptive politics. A classic example of Tzu Sun’s famous aphorism that: “If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest.” No one, outside the party, expected or was prepared for what followed. There were two aspects to the success of its campaign. One was seizing the prime opportunity out of the DUP’s …
I was an observer in only one polling station last Thursday, but anecdotal evidence from candidates and activists at the Belfast count suggest that some of the abuses mentioned below were widespread. Furthermore, election results confirm that which should be an antithesis of democracy: “vote management was good,” to quote the words of one teller. May I therefore call, again, for all parties to come to a voluntary agreement on the conduct of elections, so that future contests do comply …
So how did the SDLP do? They had few opportunities to make themselves heard through the gales of outrage which sustained an often extremely petty two party media scrap throughout the campaign. And they had to fight it on a tiny campaign budget. At best, I thought they could win eleven seats, or as few as nine. Whilst they did lose two sitting MLAs (West Belfast and FST) both had an uptick in vote share of 1.3%, and they picked up …
*Whyte, Nicholas (22 December 2016). “If the 2016 Assembly election had had five seats per constituency…”. AE17 without the background noise As Northern Ireland’s turbulent history takes another turn there is a widespread feeling that AE17 has changed the local political situation profoundly. It was a good result for Sinn Féin, there is no doubt about that, and for Alliance too, but what about the others? The DUP admitted to a bad day at the office and Mike Nesbitt has …
“When the history of this election written the first word is going to be ‘transfers’…” said Mark Carruthers of Mike Nesbitt’s only real contribution to a tumultuous campaign. The real problem the UUs had was its lack of resonant messages on the government record. However, once said, transferring cannot be unsaid. It’s the clear logic of anyone going into government to power share. And it wasn’t universally unpopular. The party increased its vote like almost everyone else. But by nothing like enough. …
Nationalism stands strong in the new Assembly with more seats, more votes and is now in a position to deliver more. I watched from the Titanic Count Centre on Friday, victory after victory for the Nationalist parties. Sinn Fein’s tsunami started in West Belfast and swept the province leaving opponents from People Before Profit to the UUP reeling. The SDLP also had some resilience and managed to gain a seat in Lagan Valley and came close to winning another in …
Before I set to on a profile of the UUP’s fate in this election I think this thought from Pete Shirlow is worth sharing on its own. Mick FealtyMick 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
