With speculation mounting that we may see a general election either by the end of the year, or early in 2020 now feels like an appropriate time to look at the results of the 2017 Westminster election to remind us of the current state of play. Following a walking holiday in Wales at Easter 2017 Theresa May called a snap general election in order to give herself an increased, working majority in the Commons so that she could deliver …
Slugger TV: Episode 29 from Northern Visions NvTv on Vimeo. This month we looked at some local marginal seats with Chris Donnelly and Niall Kelly David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
The SDLP Leader, Colum Eastwood; Proroguing your parliament to enforce the will of a government that has no democratic legitimacy for an act that has no majority support is the behaviour of a tin-pot dictator. Boris Johnson has stepped far outside the acceptable norms for a functioning democracy and he must be reined in. “This is a moment for political courage. Every MP should take a stand in this moment, to defend the interests of people across these islands but …
Official papers released under the 30/20 year rule document government analysis of the reasons for Joe Hendron’s West Belfast victory in the 1992 General Election, record a spot of SDLP infighting as election agent Tom Kelly airs his views on Seamus Mallon and John Hume ahead of a crucial court judgement on an election petition challenging the result. Voter fraud and personation was also under the spotlight, along with a decision to continue to exclude Sinn Fein from consultations about electoral spending.
Dear Mr Tusk, The proposed date of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, 31 October, is fast approaching. As leaders of local political parties who represent the cross-community majority who voted to remain in the EU we have grave concerns about the current trajectory toward a no-deal Brexit and the impact this would have on our economy, our border and community cohesion. An analysis carried out by the Northern Ireland Civil Service has predicted job losses in the region …
Spending by candidates in the 2019 local government election is now available and when we delve into it, comparing candidate and party spend with the number of votes secured, a number of very interesting narratives emerge. The headline figure is that 819 candidates, representing 17 parties (plus 71 independents) spent a total of £650,140 in order to win 462 council seats. (It should be noted that there are only returns for 815 candidates as 4 candidates either did not make …
One of the great debates, and I use that term loosely, we have had over the past decade in Northern Irish politics is whether the Alliance Party are more nationalist or unionist. Instead of letting Alliance, and the people who vote for them, define what the party stands for, certain elements of the political establishment, in particular political unionism, have gone out of their way to attempt to define Alliance as being somewhere on the spectrum between anti-unionist and pro-republican. …
As expected, Naomi Long won a seat in the European Parliament following the Alliance Party’s success at the local elections earlier in the month. However, it isn’t necessarily a given that the Alliance Party’s success at the local and European level will translate to success in any future Assembly election. This is because the areas that Alliance increased their vote in aren’t optimal from the point of view of maximizing their representation in the Assembly. Unlike the system in Israel, …
As one election ends another begins. Yesterday we were invited to follow the SDLP European Candidate and Party Leader, Colum Eastwood around on the North Belfast leg of his trip. We moved around in the new famous battle bus that has garnered comments from Diane Dodds and Jim Allister. This included a visit to a day centre in Newington then to the Girdwood site for a visit with local MLA, Nichola Mallon and then up to the Crumlin Star for …
The seats The ballots have been cast, the votes have been counted, the results are in and the spinning has begun. Despite thoughts before the election that both the DUP and Sinn Féin would consolidate their support and increase their seats, the DUP managed to lose 8 seats and Sinn Féin saw no change to their total. The failure of the two big parties to make gains did not, however, translate into victories for the UUP and SDLP, with both …
The Eames-Bradley report was the best approach yet to how Northern Ireland should deal with Troubles legacy issues, argues Mark Durkan. The former SDLP leader and deputy first minister was interviewed for the ‘Forward Together’ podcast series immediately before declaring his candidacy for Fine Gael for the Dublin constituency in the European Parliament elections. Mark argues that the proposals tabled for the 2013 talks mediated by US envoy Richard Haass were “not as good as Eames-Bradley”. The challenge is also …
With the counting now concluded in the 2019 Northern Ireland council elections, it is apparent that centrist parties have captured a significant number of seats from both nationalist and unionist parties. However, nationalist parties have captured enough seats from unionists to keep their total number of seats across the councils roughly the same, whilst the number of unionist councillors has dropped substantially. The number of seats won by each party/group in 2014 and 2019 is broken down in the table …
The centre ground parties, and the Alliance Party in particular, have made significant gains at the May 2019 local elections. With all of the first preference votes now counted, the Alliance Party made the largest gain of the share of the first-preference vote, up by 4.9% from the 6.6% received in 2014 to 11.5% in this year’s poll. The Green Party more than doubled their share of the vote from 0.9% in 2014 to 2.1%, whilst People Before Profit received …
As well as sharing a border with the other wards in the Fermanagh Omagh District Council, Erne West shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. A border that has been much discussed in recent months as Brexit has unfolded. Indeed, some of the major villages within this ward have been frequently visited by politicians during the Brexit negotiations includin leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg who visited Belcoo in June 2018. The ward is heavily associated with agriculture and according to NISRA …
The 2014 European and Local Government elections were held on the same day, unlike this time around when the Council election will be held three weeks before the European election. Some might think that the local government election results will be a sure-fire way to predict the results of the European election but there are a number of reasons why this might not be the case. As I have mentioned before, no party is standing in every DEA in the …
Our crack panel sat down and reviewed the party election broadcasts hitting your screens for #LE19. Listen to our musings – frivolous and more serious – about messaging, target audiences, music and aesthetics as well as politics in our podcast with Allison Morris, Chris Brown, Alan Meban and David McCann.
Following on from my previous post looking at the runners and riders for the local government election, I’ll now drill down in a bit more detail to look at each council and some of the key races. In a previous post I spoke about how all the parties will be telling us how they want our votes, but in reality no party in the 2014 election stood in every single DEA, meaning that not everyone who wanted to vote for …
Hearing reports @columeastwood is about to enter EU election race. pic.twitter.com/cuo134ITCY — Enda McClafferty (@endamcclafferty) April 15, 2019 Following one declaration today, the SDLP are now in the process of selecting their candidate for the European Election. Mounting speculation is that the party leader, Colum Eastwood will take up the baton for the party. It is a risk for him to be sure, but with Nicholson out of the race, the SDLP need to show they’re taking this race seriously …
Before the local government election notice of election was published on Tuesday 26th March we started to see the familiar sight of election posters appearing on lampposts across Northern Ireland. Love them or loathe them, posters are a mainstay of elections in Northern Ireland and in the Republic in a way that they are not in GB. Parties compete to be the first to get their posters up to ensure they get the best positions; at busy junctions and outside …
The nominations for the 2019 local government election are in and a total of 819 candidates are running for 462 council seats across eleven different council areas – a decrease from the 893 candidates who sought election in 2014. The DUP was the largest party in 2014 and this remains but the total number of candidates they are running has decreased, from 189 to 172. There has been a slight increase in the number of candidates that Sinn Féin are …
