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VOTING FOR TURKEYS AT CHRISTMAS
A blog about General Election 2019 in NI
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Election Review: SDLP
General Election 2019 is in the books. Boris wins, Corbyn loses & Swinson is seeking alternative employment. It’s a tough business. Nobody who has shown the courage to put their head above the parapet deserves to have their nose rubbed in a defeat.
It’s nice to start with the winners, and there were no bigger winners in this than the SDLP. They have had two massive victories that will offer a lifeline to the party, politically and financially. It can’t be underestimated how big this week has been for them, particularly Colum Eastwood.He had done well as leader, but had done everything short of winning something. That has changed now. He can’t rest on his laurels, but will get the time to make the changes his party needs to make.
Sinn Féin have huge numbers of members, which means this victory offers a potential pitfall that I previously hinted at in the blog. In 2017, when Mark Durkan lost his seat, one of the campaigning tools employed by Sinn Féin was having their legions of members sharing videos of SDLP MPs affirming their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II. And it worked.
This next parliament will be nothing like the last one. For one thing, it’s likely to last a lot longer. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act would suggest the next General Election will be in December 2024, but given the size of the majority, common sense would dictate that it will be held in the summer of either 2023 or 2024.
May 2nd 2024 seems the most likely date.
Another difference will be the influence Northern Ireland MPs enjoy in this parliament. In the last one there was no more influential group of MPs than the 11 from NI who took up their seats in Westminster.
In the next parliament the 11 MP’s from Northern Ireland who take up their seats, will have little more influence than the 7 who don’t. They will be able to nudge government policy through committees and at some point there will be a rebellion on the government back banches and they may be able to claim something from Prime Minster’s “bag of sweeties” (Digression Alert: I think it was Jim Molyneaux who first described it that way).
At this election, coming out of a hung parliament, the SDLP taking seats played well with some of the electorate. But by the next time these seats are up for election the days of NI MPs being the tail wagging the Westminster dog will be a long way in the rear view mirror. After 4+ years of a Johnson government being able to do whatever it likes in Westminster with no need of help from anyone, the lustre of the green benches will be somewhat faded. But video of Hanna and Eastwood declaring their allegiance would surely surface again at the next election.
The SDLP should maybe think about finding a way around doing so. Back in 2010, then Secretary of State Owen Patterson suggested Sinn Féin MPs could write an alternative affirmation. The principle having being conceded, the SDLP have every right to expect that they can take the British Government up on the offer.
To do so would not only allow their 2 new MP’s to avoid facing any awkward videos in a few years’ time, it would remove one the strongest arguments in favour of abstentionism. In the short term they may take it bit of grief from unionists, but nothing that won’t be long forgotten by the time of the next general election.
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Final Prediction: Polls open in 7 hours
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Constituency Preview: North Belfast
This is the 18th and final constituency preview. And there is no doubt that North Belfast is the headline act of this election. It has been since the moment the SDLP announced they were stepping aside.
This one is going to be close. Anyone can tell you that though, so I’m not going to sit on the fence. I think John Finucane will win.
Finucane doesn’t quite fit in Sinn Féin. At time he seems almost semi-detached from the rest of his party. He’s just a little too middle class. A bit too handsome. After the horrors he experienced during his childhood, nobody would have blamed him if he had left school and taken himself to the United States. If he had done so, and gone into politics there, he might have been a contender to succeed Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house by now.
But he’s a much better fit for North Belfast than for Sinn Féin. He’s a local boy made good. He went to the local school, lives in the constituency, and still plays in goal for his Gaelic Football team. His being the Sinn Féin candidate is enough for most voters in Ardoyne and the New Lodge. The Sinn Féin base are energised at the prospect of victory, but the DUP base and Sinn Féin base are mirror images of each other, and will probably cancel each other out.
The difference Finucane can make, is that he can reach further than any other Sinn Féin candidate who comes to mind. Alban McGuinness might not have been able to bring himself to say he would be voting for John Finucane, but he said enough to make it clear that he would be, and to encourage SDLP voters to do likewise. Alban McGuinness simply would not have gone that for for Gerry Kelly or Carál Ní Chuilín
McGuinness helped Finucane with that statement, not least because he has been a strong opponent of abortion liberalisation. Knowing that he is voting for Finucane will enable some other people with similar outlook to put a cross beside a Sinn Féin candidate.
He’s also a Sinn Féin candidate more socially liberal moderates can vote for. In 2017 John Finucane found over 5000 new voters in North Belfast. Turnout climbed significantly, from 59.2% in 2015 to 67.6%. My theory is that the lion’s share of the people he was able to bring out to the polls were middle class Catholics who up until a few years ago were no more than nominally nationalist. Brexit has the potential to put a barrier between these people and their uncle’s holiday home in Donegal, and they just aren’t going to stand for it.
But Brexit didn’t dominate politics in 2017 as it does now, and it think there are probably more Eamonns and Aislings who will come out tomorrow for the first time in a long time. If turnout is up in St Peter’s Church Hall, or is holding up better than in other parts of the constituency, Finucane will almost certainly win.
The Sinn Féin campaign has been designed to bring that middle class vote out. The Catholic v Protestant bar chart that backfired so spectacularly in 2015 is long gone. In everything from Party Election Broadcasts to billboards and leaflets they have adopted neutral colour schemes and abandoned flags. This approach has been unwittingly boosted by the loyalist banners about the Finucane family erected around North Belfast. They are every bit as crude as the Sinn Féin leaflets of yesteryear, and achieve nothing but draw attention to the trauma the Finucane family have endured, and the fortitude them have shown in the face of that trauma.
There isn’t really an equivalent unionist block of middle class voters in North Belfast. The constituency ends before Jordanstown, and the protestant equivalent of Eamonn and Aisling have moved to Ballyhackamore, where they will probably vote for Naomi Long. Where they do exist though, I have seen some anecdotal evidence on social media in the last 48 hours, that a handful are considering voting for Finucane. Like Alban McGuinness they won’t actually say the words in many cases, but are saying things like “no other anti-Brexit candidate can win” and that they will “vote tactically on this occasion”.
I suspect many of those venturing this opinions like this on social media are doing so partly to assess how it goes down among their peer group, and partly to talk themselves into it. The probably won’t know if they will actually do it until they have the pencil and ballot in front of them. The only way anyone will know if this actually happened is by looking at the Alliance vote. In the absence of a Green Party candidate the Alliance vote would usually be expected to go up. If it goes down, it means at least some followed through.
The DUP approach has been trying to get out their base, while discouraging moderate nationalists from voting. Their main strategy has been to associate Finucane with the attempt on Nigel Dodds life in the Royal Hospital in 1996 and make everyone look as bad as each other.
Finucane hasn’t handled the question brilliantly. If he comes up short he will regret not squashing this line of attack weeks ago. Every answer he has given has been less convincing than simply saying “I don’t know really what happened. I was only 15 at the time. But I know as well and anyone that terrible things happen in conflicts. Just as I think bringing weapons of war into hospitals in Gaza is wrong, it doesn’t seem right that guns were used in a Belfast hospital”.
But this election isn’t about 1996. It’s about 2020 and Brexit.
This constituency being the most important battleground in the whole election, I expect turnout to be closer to the 2017 figure than the 2015 figure. It may even increase, in spite of the time of year and pressure of Christmas. It will be extremely close, but I have a feeling that Finucane will take win. If for no other reason because he has a sunnier disposition than Dodds and just looks like one of life’s winners.
PREDICTION: Sinn Féin GAIN
Current Odds: DUP 4/5, Sinn Féin 10/11, Alliance 66/1
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Constituency Preview: North Antrim
Despite everything, Ian Paisley is going to win this.
In 2017 he received an extraordinary 59% of the vote. There could be a backlash against the scandal of the past few years, but it isn’t as if there had never been any controversy around Ian Paisley in 2017. With no TUV candidate running this time, he may even exceed that 59% figure.
There is no obvious candidate for the electorate to come behind in opposition to Paisley. Outgoing leader Robin Swann is back on the ballot paper for the Ulster Unionists. With a less well known candidate last time they lost about 1500 votes, which they stand a decent chance of reclaiming, but it’s no more than scraps from the Paisley table.
Curiously Sinn Féin are once again running local councillor Cara McShane rather than MLA Phillip McGuigan. There is no realistic prospect of a second Sinn Féin assembly seat, and they couldn’t win this if Liam Neeson was their candidate, so it’s a little odd that they are using this election to boost the profile of McShane. McGuigan was replaced by Daithí McKay as the Sinn Féin assembly candidate in 2007, before being restored in 2016 when McKay stood down in disgrace. Perhaps there is some reason why McGuigan isn’t keen on Stormont, or Sinn Féin aren’t keen on having him there, and McShane will be his next replacement at some point in the future.
After 4 elections failing to make any progress in East Antrim, Margaret McKillop has given it up as a bad job, and is going to see if she has any more luck in North Antrim for the SDLP. Restoring an SDLP assembly seat isn’t impossible with a better balanced nationalist vote and transfers from Alliance, so it may be a worthwhile exercise.
The Alliance Party will try again with Patricia O'Lynn. The 5.6% she achieved in 2017 was the best result Alliance have managed in North Antrim since the Good Friday Agreement, but is still some way off being in contention for a Stormont seat. Alliance probably have a better chance of climbing the mountain than the SDLP though. At an assembly election they should do well from SDLP transfers, but to do that they have to avoid being eliminated before the SDLP. For that reason their target here will be to get ahead of the SDLP
Prediction: DUP HOLD
Current Odds: DUP 1/200, UUP 33/1, Sinn Féin 50/1, Alliance 66/1, SDLP 100/1
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Constituency Preview: Mid Ulster
One of the many difficulties with losing elections, is that when people lose their seat, they lose their wage and have to go off and do something else to keep the wolf from the door. A look at the Twitter account of Former Mid-Ulster MLA Sandra Overend confirms this. According to her bio Overend is now working in the construction industry.
And with that the UUP are no longer competitive in Mid-Ulster even for a seat in Stormont. If there was to be an early assembly election, in Mid-Ulster Sinn Féin would return 3 MLA, while the DUP and SDLP would return one each. Exactly as it is at the moment
There is one person in Mid-Ulster who certainly isn’t going to be out of work in the near future. Francie Molloy is one of 2 men, both famous for their white beards, who already know what they will be doing towards the end of the month.
Prediction: Sinn Féin HOLD
Current Odds: SF 1/100, DUP 33/1, 100/1 bar
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Constituency Preview: South Belfast
The game should be up for Emma Little-Pengelly. South Belfast voted overwhelmingly against Brexit in 2016. But in 2017 Alasdair McDonnell fell just 2000 votes short of retaining his seat. That election wasn’t about Brexit in the same way this one is though.
Failure to win in South Belfast means the end of the SDLP. If they don’t manage to take South Belfast, it’s highly unlikely they will have taken Foyle either.
The good news for them is that Sinn Féin stepping aside in South Belfast should deliver the seat to Claire Hanna on a silver platter. When Dr. McDonnell came up 2000 votes short last time, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir was sitting on 7000.
Hanna is also a better candidate than McDonnell. No politician in Northern Ireland has been more associated with resisting Brexit than her. The SDLP would love to have the luxury of running a party grandee like McDonnell, and be confident of victory, but the reality is they need to play all their strongest cards in every election. That is why Colum Eastwood and Claire Hanna patched up their differences before this election. They may disagree about the direction of the party, but after a bad European election if they can’t win somewhere this time out they won’t have a party to disagree about.
I think Alliance genuinely thought they would have a shot here at the start of the campaign. It was no coincidence that Paula Bradshaw was on TV as often as Barra Best for a while. Nor is it any coincidence that it’s been Naomi Long and Stephen Farry since shortly after Claire Bailey withdrew. To win they needed 2 candidates each in the unionist and nationalist camps, and to convince Green voters to tactically switch to them. There only being one nationalist candidate was a blow, but the leader of the Green Party publicly endorsing that nationalist was the end of the Alliance challenge.
The UUP took criticism among unionists for standing at all, but they have little choice if they ever hope to recover from being any more than a rump. They have almost no chance of finishing ahead of anyone other than the Aontú candidate in this, but they are no more than a bit of luck away from taking an assembly seat here. Michael Henderson raises his profile among the electorate with every election he stands in. Getting his face up on the lampposts of south Belfast one more time, and taking the opportunity to knock another few thousand doors, might just be what it takes to get the job done.
The bad news for him is that with every passing day the restoration of Stormont looks more likely, and consequently a spring assembly election looks less and less likely.
South Belfast is a battleground. It is just about possible for Emma Little Pengelly to hang on. It would require a combination of Aontú doing well enough to retain their deposit, and the Remain vote being shared almost perfectly between SDLP and Alliance. But they need to be even luckier than last time. Hanna is a very short odds on favourite for good reason.
Prediction: SDLP GAIN
Current Odds: SDLP 1/6, Alliance 11/2, DUP 13/2, 125/1 bar
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Constituency Preview: East Belfast
At the height of the LA Race Riots, Rodney King famously asked “Can’t we all just get along”. The people of NI have been asking “Can’t we all just get Naomi Long” for some time, and last summer when a she was on every ballot paper here, Alliance had their best ever result. Long is probably the most popular politician in Northern Ireland, and is easily the strongest card Alliance have to play. The trouble they have had is in translating the popularity of the party leader into votes for their other candidates.
People will of course remember Long winning this seat for Alliance in 2010. Peter Robinson storming out of the Leisure Centre which carried his name is one of those TV moments guaranteed inclusion on the 2010 episode of Reeling In The Years (and whatever the UTV & BBC NI versions are called).
But I have a really tough time believing Naomi Long can win this again. I suspect even running here was a strategic mistake.
When she won this in 2010, she did so against Peter Robinson, at a time when the Robinson family had become embroiled in scandal. There is no need to rake over the details, beyond saying the election was held just four months after that episode of Spotlight. In 2015 Gavin Robinson began his career as an MP with a tirade from the stage of the count centre that was as unfortunate as it was ungracious. But since that evening he has managed to avoid any major controversy. There is no reason to suspect he is in line for the sort of backlash from the unionist community suffered by Peter Robinson 9 years ago.
Another problem Long faces is that although the Ulster Unionists are running, either by accident or design, they are standing a paper candidate. The UUP candidate in 2010, Trevor Ringland, had a long record on the ground in East Belfast, as well as 31 caps for Ireland and 4 for the British & Irish Lions. In 2019 their candidate is a councillor from another constituency, who has already been criticised for performing that role while holding a day job based in London.
One of the many factors that allowed Long to win in 2010 was that Ringland drew over 20% of the vote, presumably from unionists who were disenchanted with Peter Robinson, but who didn’t consider it remotely likely that a non-unionist candidate could take the seat. The unionist electorate have clearly learned from the experience. In 2017 the UUP candidate received only 3.3%, and won’t be expecting to do much better this time.
Alliance have fought hard for this seat. When trying to hold it in 2015 they added another 4000 votes, and largely retained them in 2017. But the reality is that their high-watermark is 17,000 votes. On a bad day the DUP would hope not to be far short of 20,000.
But the Ginga Ninja has done it before. Is there any reason to believe I might be wrong about all of this? Playing devils advocate I can come up with a few decent reasons why I might not be right.
The first reason is the decision of the nationalist parties to withdraw from East Belfast. At Westminster elections Sinn Féin reliably poll around 850 votes in this area, and the SDLP are the handful of spare change to allow me to say there are roughly 1000 nationalist votes available. If they all vote Alliance that would help Long, but there are question marks over just how likely that is. Assembly results suggest there are at least 1,500 nationalist in East Belfast, so those most likely to be amenable to tactical voting are already doing so.
At an organisational level the SDLP barely exist in East Belfast, and those few hundred SDLP voters are fairly evenly scattered across East Belfast. Sinn Féin have a strong structure in East Belfast, bastioned in the Short Strand where there is a decent concentration of nationalist voters. If SF have been actively encouraging those voters to vote for Long that will be of genuine benefit to her.
Another factor that could help Long is demographic change in East Belfast. A lot of new houses have been built in recent years around Ballyhackamore and Dundonald. Anecdotally I know quite a few friends and colleagues who have moved there from other areas. If my experience is representative of a trend this constituency is becoming younger, trendier and more middle class.
Since the last election, online registration has made it much easier to register to vote, so the makeup of the electorate will be a little different at this election. Electoral office figures show an extra 2750 electors have joined the register in East Belfast since 2017, the largest increase of any constituency in Northern Ireland.
But without something more I just don’t think it will be enough. I expect Alliance to get a bit closer, but I also expect Gavin Robinson to be re-elected without too much fuss.
Prediction: DUP HOLD
Current Odds: DUP 4/11, Alliance 15/8, UUP 50/1, Conservative 66/1
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Constituency Preview: Upper Bann
This one was very close between the DUP and the UUP in 2015. But there was all sorts of shenanigans here in 2017, and eventually the DUP won really easily. A lot has happened here in the 18 months since, but it’s hard to see any result other than the DUP winning.
Their majority is 8000, but the second placed candidate is John O’Dowd from Sinn Féin. Only a unionist can win here, but the UUP are now 14,000 votes behind the DUP. To win they need a third of DUP voters to change their minds and vote UUP. That’s just not going to happen.
If there is any interest it is in whether Eóin Tennyson of Alliance can put himself into contention for an assembly seat next time out. He was elected to Lagan Valley DEA at this years council elections, but unless Alliance can improve on their results earlier this year, an assembly seat here is probably beyond them for a while.
Prediction: DUP HOLD
Current Odds: DUP 1/7, UUP 6/1, Sinn Fein 8/1, 100/1 bar
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#BBCTheView Leader Interviews: Arlene Foster
Well, that’s that. The last of the leaders interviews in in the books. Arlene Fosters appearance in front of Mark Carruthers was neither the best nor the worst of these. The DUP will be reasonably happy with how it went.
George Bush supposedly won the 2000 Presidential Election because he was the candidate people wanted to have a beer with. The fact that he had been teetotal since the mid 1980s had nothing to do with that apparently. His brother being the Governor of Florida didn’t hurt either.
Arlene Foster isn’t that type of politician. She isn’t trying to present herself to the electorate as a down to earth friend of their sister. Nor should she necessarily have to. It’s only females who are expected to grin like idiots in these sort of interviews. When a man chooses to take the opposite tack people tend to use adjectives like “business-like or “resolute” to describe them, while women are more likely to be tagged as “severe” or “stern”.
She’s never going to be one for cracking offhand jokes during an interview or debate, but whatever you think of Arlene Foster’s demeanour, it’s priced in at this point. If anything it has been softened up a bit for this campaign (the crown brooch has gone, replaced by a NI Hospice pin badge). A lack of candidates from the TUV et al has made it possible to do that without having to worry about losing votes to even more extreme unionist parties.
She did however appear to be under the weather last night. She looked generally unwell, caught out by a couple of couching fits and had to reach for the glass of water at least once. There is a stinker of a head-cold doing the rounds and she stuck me as someone who had spent a good bit of the week in bed with a lemsip and a box of tissues. In an ideal world she might have wanted a few more days but that obviously wasn’t possible.
Despite that difficulty, she did a generally decent job last night. Arlene Foster never departs from the script. Her responses were clearly well prepared, but she delivered her lines calmly and clearly. She knew in advance that she would be asked most of the questions in advance, but even when she wasn’t she responded with one of her pre-prepared lines anyway. That approach makes he look a bit robotic at time, but it also mitigates the risk of getting into trouble. In parts of the interview she may have been unconvincing, but she always appeared capable.
The one time she departed from that strategy was in answering the questions about Ian Paisley. Mark Carruthers seems genuinely taken aback that she revealed a parliamentary enquiry into the affairs of the North Antrim MP is underway. I can only imagine that the DUP had consciously decided to make that information public. It seems far too enormous of a slip of the tongue to have been a mistake.
Where she perhaps made herself a hostage to fortune was by saying there is “room for growth for the DUP”. That line will almost certainly be quoted back to her after the elections if things don’t go well for the DUP. If the DUP lose some or all of their Belfast seats, it would have been plausible enough to brush suggest it was always going to be a struggle to hold on and brush the losses off. Having stated on the record that there is room for growth, should the worst happen for her and the DUP end up sending fewer MPs back to Westminster on Monday week, party rivals and the media will now have a justification for suggesting her leadership has failed.
But that’s for another day. For now the DUP will be happy. Only Alliance might be disappointed with how these leaders’ interviews went, but even that was so long ago now that the impact will be fairly negligible.
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Constituency Preview: South Antrim
If there is anywhere the Ulster Unionist Party can defeat a DUP incumbent in a straight fight, it’s South Antrim. It’s always close between the 2 main unionist parties there, and the people of South Antrim are about as likely to stick by an MP as Chelsea are to stick by their manager. In this century the area has been represented in Parliament by Clifford Forsythe, then Willie McCrea, then David Burnside, then McCrea again, then Danny Kinahan, and now by Paul Girvan. I guess that makes Willie McCrea the Jose Mourinho of this analogy, which isn’t a comparison I’ve heard made to often.
The largest majority any of those names managed to rack up was the margin of a little under 3,500 managed by McCrea in 2005. Last time out Paul Girvan defeated Danny Kinahan by 3208 votes. So is there reason to believe that the people of South Antrim have had yet another collective attack of buyer’s remorse?
The X factor, as ever in this election, is Brexit. At the 2016 referendum South Antrim voted to leave, but by a margin of less than 1%. Girvan is the only Leave candidate standing, but in this overwhelmingly unionist area questions remain. How many Leave Unionists have changed their mind, and how many blame the DUP, for recommending what they now consider a strategic blunder for unionism?
The first cause for Ulster Unionist hope is that Paul Girvan hasn’t established much of a profile as a member of parliament. As the focus of politics has moved from Stormont to Westminster, it’s been conspicuous that Girvan hasn’t been one of the faces of the DUP. Others like Sammy Wilson, Emma Little-Pengelly and Jeffrey Donaldson have been on television and radio speaking about Brexit and the other issues. Paul Girvan hasn’t.
The difference in vote share for the parties between assembly and Westminster elections suggest there has been a fair amount of tactical voting going on in South Antrim, with both Alliance and SDLP supporters lending their vote to Kinahan. The 2017 assembly election figures are that 20.7% of people voted UUP, while 42% of people voted for a non-unionist candidate of some description. Yet in the 2017 General Election, Danny Kinahan received 30.8% of the vote, while non-unionists polled 31%.
A potential difficulty is the Alliance surge. That surge has largely been the result of people who previously might have been expected to vote UUP moving to Alliance. But the Ulster Unionist vote has held up better here than in other areas. Antrim and Newtownabbey Council has very similar boundaries to the South Antrim constituency, and in this year’s council election the vote share was DUP 33.5%, UUP 20.3%, Alliance 18.7%, Sinn Féin 13.1% and SDLP 7.8%.
To stand a chance of winning Kinahan needs to hold on to traditional UUP supporters, draw as many tactical votes as he has previously, and find a few more from somewhere. But should the electorate be provided with evidence between now and polling day that Alliance stand the best chance of defeating the DUP, the tactical vote he relies upon could plummet. Much here could depend on the Lucidtalk poll results but my inclination is it will be Kinahan who gets closest. He is on the most liberal wing of the UUP and unlike some of his UUP colleagues is convincing as a Remain supporter.
Among the other candidates John Blair of Alliance would be Northern Ireland’s first openly gay MP in the unlikely event that he were to be elected. Declan Kearney and Roisin Lynch will represent Sinn Féin and the SDLP respectively. Kearney is a sitting MLA for the area, while Lynch aspires to be. However it seems unlikely that the current mix of 2 x DUP, and 1 each for SF, UUP & Alliance would change should an assembly election be held in the near future.
Prediction: DUP HOLD
Current Odds: DUP 4/6, UUP 7/4, Alliance 4/1, Sinn Fein 100/1, SDLP 100/1
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Constituency Preview: South Down
There was a time in the fairly recent past when other parties liked to derisively refer to the SDLP as the South Down & Londonderry Party, but even those 2 seats fell to a Sinn Féin challenge in 2017. The SDLP are fighting hard to reclaim Foyle, but they don’t seem to be throwing themselves into reclaiming South Down with the same vigour. They have 2 MLA’s in this constituency, but have rather curiously decided against selecting either of them as their candidate. That honour instead goes to Michael Savage, a councillor for a district in neighbouring Newry & Armagh.
That may be due to reluctance on the part of either Colin McGrath or Sinead Bradley to take on a contest that simply may not be winnable for the SDLP. The aggregate result of this year’s local elections in the Downpartrick, Crotlieve, Slieve Croob and Mournes DEAs, which make up the lion’s share of South Down, show Sinn Féin to be well ahead. Since those results Chris Hazzard has also enjoyed his viral moment with Victoria Derbyshire in Parliament Square.
Hazzard has been a prominent figure for Sinn Féin, not just over this campaign, but in a number of roles over the last 5 years. In theory this should be a battleground constituency, but in practice it is hard to imagine the SDLP overhauling Hazzard or his 2500 vote majority. The bookies offer only prohibitively short odds on Hazard.
There is 1 seat up for grabs among the non-nationalist parties here should there be an assembly election in the near future. In truth it should be a safe Unionist seat, but the ongoing estrangement between the DUP Jim Wells means, should Wells opt to run as an independent, either the UUP or Patrick Brown of the Alliance Party could take the seat, should they enjoy a little bit of luck with the order of eliminations.
The DUP are running Mournes councillor Glyn Hanna, while the Ulster Unionists have brought Banbridge councillor Jill McAuley into the constituency to carry their banner. The UUP have featured McAuley in their Party Election Broadcast, and are clearly attempting to boost her profile, even if their approach seems a little 20th Century. A little like the situation facing the UUP in East Derry, a better option is potentially available. Should new leader Steve Aiken manage to convince John McCallister to return to a more liberal version of the Ulster Unionist Party, he would have a strong chance of reclaiming the seat lost in 2017. McCallister has been out of active politics for a while now, and may not be interested in coming back into the fray (he has 2 children and a farm to run), but politics has a way of drawing people back in.
Prediction: Sinn Féin HOLD
Current Odds: Sinn Féin 1/5, SDLP 3/1, Alliance 60/1, DUP 66/1, UUP 100/1
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Constituency Preview: West Tyrone
When I was researching the North Down preview I discovered that prior to being the MP for North Down, Jim Kilfedder was the last unionist MP for West Belfast. He lost the seat to Gerry Fitt 2 months before Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup. At the time it seemed like discovering an archaeological artefact. But then I started this one and realised that I remember West Tyrone having a Unionist MP, and now I feel like an archaeological artefact.
West Tyrone was a new creation in 1997. On the morning Tony Blair walked into Downing Street to a rock-star reception, a man called Willie Thompson was waking up as a member of parliament, courtesy of a unionist pact and an almost perfectly divided Nationalist vote.
Things are very different these days. In 2017 Barry McElduff pushed the Sinn Féin vote over 50%. It was slightly lower at the by-election after the Kingsmill loaf fiasco, but this is a general election and they will have the 50% mark in mind again.
Local MLAs Daniel McCrossan of the SDLP and Thomas Buchanan of the DUP will fight the good fight, but there is no chance of an upset. Aontú are standing James Hope, and there will be a little interest in seeing how well he does in a constituency where pro-life nationalists know they can vote for him without risking a unionist being elected.
At an assembly election change here looks unlikely. Unionism is short of 2 quotas. If the UUP candidate was eliminated before Stephen Donnelly of Alliance it is possible he could take the final seat but it looks an uphill struggle.
Prediction: Sinn Féin HOLD
Current Odds: Sinn Fein 1/200, DUP 50/1, Alliance 50/1, SDLP 66/1, UUP 66/1
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Constituency Preview: North Down
It’s time to stop treading water and do another one of the contested seats. And one reader of the blog has waited long enough, so I’m going to have a look at the Gold Coast.
Over the years North Down has developed a reputation for elections mavericks such as James Kilfedder and Bob McCartney. It should be noted that, for the bulk of his for 2 and a half decades, there the version of North Down served by Kilfedder was very different to today's. In those days it covered virtually all of modern day North Down & Strangford, with a western boundary on the River Lagan, meaning the constituency also covered places now in Lagan Valley such as Hillsborough and Dromara. In 1979 North Down had a registered electorate of 99,861. Had the boundaries remained unchanged it would probably be around 200,000 today.
North Down these days means Holywood, Bangor, Donaghadee and the other few villages and hamlets along the North Down coast. North Down is often held up as something akin to part of the Sussex coast. My suspicion is that this comparison is made most often by people from North Down, who have the glamour of Brighton in mind, but others might be thinking more of the faded glory and boarded up shop units in some of the other former tourist towns on the English Channel. You don’t have to change many letters to get from Bognor to Bangor!
But he’s suffered enough of my blasphemy. The hole created by Sylvia Hermon stepping down, is as obvious as the one Roger Rabbit left in that venetian blind. In her absence looking at the results from last time is of very limited value. Combining them with the Assembly and Local Government results perhaps offers a slightly clearer picture.
The high water mark for the DUP in North Down is 38%. They achieved that in both the 2017 general election and 2017 assembly election. Sylvia Hermon narrowly held on to her Westminster seat with 41% of the vote. There was no Ulster Unionist candidate in the 2017 General election, but given the stability of the DUP vote between the 2 elections, it seems likely that the 20% of the electorate who supported the UUP in the assembly election backed Hermon almost unanimously.
At the assembly election the combined Alliance/Green vote was 32.3%. At the Westminster Election of the same year it was less than half that figure (15.8%). The statistics back up common sense. Hermon’s voters were obviously a coalition of UUP, Alliance and Green supporters.
This time the contest if a straight fight between Stephen Farry of Alliance, and Alex Easton of the DUP. To win Stephen Farry has to more or less rebuild the Hermon coalition. I say more or less because he can afford some leakage. There will be a UUP candidate, so losing some Hermon voters is inevitable, but he can expect to replace those voters with the 3639 who voted for the Alliance paper-candidate in 2015, and by taking more or less all of the votes usually cast for the Green Party, SDLP or Sinn Féin. He has been greatly assisted by those 3 parties stepping back.
The first problem Farry faces is this. Sylvia Hermon was a unionist, and some of her voters will have been voting for her because she was a unionist. There was no prospect of any non-unionist being elected then, but there is now. The choice they face this time is very different. If the vast bulk of those voters return to the UUP, Farry is still alive. If a significant number vote for Alex Easton, the unionist who can win, and push him above 40%, the game is up.
The second problem Farry faces is that if he manages to get the votes of almost all the Green, SDLP & SF supporters, he will still need to bridge a gap of a couple of percentage points to the DUP. Sylvia Hermon was a moderate unionist, and some of her voters will have been voting for her because she was a moderate. When faced with the prospect of a DUP MP, some of those moderate unionists may be turned off by the DUP’s confessional wing, and by their informal links to loyalist paramilitaries. He needs some unionists, whose opinions would place them close to the liberal wing of the UUP to vote tactically for him, and push him over the line.
The UUP are running local MLA Alan Chambers. If Barney Rowan is to be believed, UUP leader Steve Aiken attempted to recruit former Chief Constable George Hamilton to add a little more firepower to the UUP. The failure of that effort means the UUP aren’t expected to feature. If the Ulster Unionist Party weren’t convinced by the merit of their candidate, it’s not easy to imagine the people of the Côte D’Own seeing things differently.
Under normal circumstances it might feel like there are just too many moving parts for Stephen Farry to take the seat for Alliance. But Brexit is the elephant in the room that I haven’t mentioned. The increasingly lazy narrative is that unionists voted to leave the EU. But 59% of voters in North Down cast their ballot for unionist parties in 2017, while 52% of the same constituency voted to Remain in 2016. It would seem that about 7% of people here where who would describe themselves as unionists, but wanted to remain in the EU.
Easton is favourite without a doubt, but there is a decent chance Farry could pull it off. An Alliance win would be an upset, but not a surprise.
Prediction: DUP GAIN
Current Odds: DUP 1/2, Alliance 2/1, UUP 7/1, Conservative 100/1
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#BBCTheView Leader Interviews: Michelle O’Neill Mary Lou McDonald
Like most I was genuinely surprised when Mark Carruthers introduced Mary Lou McDonald on last night’s episode of The View. I was expecting Michelle O’Neill, and in truth I was expecting her to have a long night. Mark Carruthers looked as surprised as anyone else.
Mark Carruthers is a tough interviewer, but he presumably spent his time this week preparing to grill Michelle O’Neill. Mary Lou McDonald is a completely different challenge, and the difference was noticeable. If results pick up when a football manager gets the chop, it’s impossible to say if the original manager wouldn’t have managed the same improvement. Similarly, although we will never know how Michelle O’Neill would have done tonight, most will probably agree that McDonald did better than O’Neill has managed at her best.
McDonald cut her teeth appearing on the political shark tank that is “Tonight with Vincent Browne”, and having come through that, she was never likely to be as easily flustered as Michelle O’Neill has been in the past. The way O’Neill presents her arguments is improving, but McDonald exuded confidence and simply did not allow Mark Carruthers to push her around. Time after time she parried his initial thrust, and when he then attempted to move things along to new ground where he might have had more luck, it was McDonald who bullied him into letting her make the point she wanted to make. And all the while the clock sitting just out of shot was ticking down.
A lot of the questions she ended up being asked were perhaps prepared for O’Neill, but were questions about things everybody would expect the President of Sinn Féin to be familiar with, such as the deputy leadership contest or the arrangement with the SDLP. If Mark Carruthers had spent his week preparing to interrogate McDonald, he would perhaps have asked more questions requiring a working knowledge of Northern Ireland. Does Mary Lou McDonald understand the intricacies of the industrial dispute in the Health Service, or the options for the new York Road interchange? We still don’t know.
The speculation about O’Neill is sure to intensify now. It seems unlikely that we will see much more of her in this election campaign. Nothing is likely to happen this year, but if the Politburo was preparing to move her aside, this is what it would probably look like.
With all that being said, I think both Mark Carruthers and the panellists made far too much of who was in the studio. There is an alternative reason for all this that has nothing to do with Michelle O’Neill. Since establishing Aontú earlier this year, Peadar Tóibín has shown himself to be entirely comfortable sitting in a Belfast TV studio, and answering questions about his party Northern Ireland. That could potentially have been picked up on by the rank and file members of Sinn Féin, and become an embarrassment for McDonald.
When Northern Ireland goes into an election, I would assume most Sinn Féin members want to see the party leader fronting the campaign, whether that person is Gerry Adams, Mary Lou McDonald or someone else. If Mary Lou McDonald hadn’t been in Belfast this afternoon she would presumably have been campaigning in the constituencies holding by-elections in the Republic. What sort of a message would it have sent to voters on both sides of the border, if the President of Sinn Féin prioritised 4 seats south of the border, over 18 north of it?
My finger in the air assessment is that I think most nationalists will be delighted that McDonald came to Belfast for this interview. Whatever the reason for the slightly surprising personnel choice, nationalists don’t want the northern section of their political parties to be a yellow pack version of the party south of the border. Sinn Féin’s USP is that they are the only truly All-Ireland Party. The party leader should lead in all parts of the island to give that credibility, and she did just that. It was a good night for Sinn Féin.
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Election Diary Day 29: 28/11/19
After the deadline for registrations ended speculation about which pact was going to emerge next, the election campaign seemed to go quiet. Having spent a weeks or so in the doldrums, it feels a little like this campaign is getting going. So far this week we’ve had Emily Maitlis and Adam Boulton in Belfast, making the obligatory stop to cover the campaign in Northern Ireland, for Sky News and BBC Newsnight respectively. All 5 of the major parties were represented in both shows, and the tone of the debate was almost cordial. It’s telling how well behaved our politicians can be when they know they are being shown outside Northern Ireland.
In my office a couple of political stories have managed to find a gap in the chat about I’m a Celebrity or the antics of Prince Andrew*. One was the interview between Jeremy Corbyn and Andrew Neal. The bad news for John Finucane is that the other was his being stopped by police for relieving himself in the city centre on a night out. The good news for him is that nobody seemed terribly shocked or annoyed by it. It seems like one of those things most people were all too happy to have a giggle about, without thinking much less of him. If anything it might help him come across as somebody fairly normal.
Receiving less attention, but perhaps of much greater significance, was Leo Varadkar hinting in Dáil Éireann that a citizen’s assembly could be established once Brexit is resolved, to consider options for reunification. A citizens assembly squared the abortion circle, and it may be able to do the same here. A set of proposals for how the partition of the island would certainly move the debate forward a step or two.
Finally, staying south of the border, over the weekend Friday’s by-elections results will revealed. With 4 constituencies in disparate parts of the country going to the polls on the same day there will be the feel of a mini-general election about the results.
Northern eyes always tend to focus on the performance of Sinn Féin. They aren’t expected to pick up a seat, but another poor performance will be noted. It’s far too early to suggest her position is threatened in any way, but Mary-Lou McDonald will be keen to have something to talk up after disappointing results in Presidential, Local and European elections.
* Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself
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Constituency Preview: Newry & Armagh
Newry & Armagh
This is another one where Sinn Féin really can’t lose.
Seamus Mallon had an enormous personal vote here in the 90′s. At the 1998 assembly election, 13,582 voters gave Seamus Mallon their 1st preference, with just over 5000 #1s shared between the other 2 SDLP candidates. Had they managed their vote more effectively all 3 SDLP candidates could have been elected, but the popularity of Mallon meant they had to make do with 2. The fact that when Mallon stood down in 2003 only 11,637 people gave the SDLP their number one, would suggests that people were voting for Mallon rather than the party.
And since Seamus Mallon retired, nobody has been able to touch Sinn Féin here. Conor Murphy won the seat in 2005 and Sinn Féin have held it ever since
Since Julian Smith announced his intention to call and Assembly election if Stormont hasn’t been restored, I’ve been writing quite a bit about how the parties in the more predictable constituencies will be reading the results as a presage to an assembly election next year. But there is little prospect of any change being possible here. There is a quota of SDLP voters, and a quota of Unionists, living in Newry and Armagh, but neither grouping has the numbers to threaten a second seat.
Making any change in an assembly election all the more unlikely, is that Sinn Féin’s vote management in 2017 was a work of art. 3 SF candidates took 48.3% of the total first preference vote between them, and split it almost perfectly (Boylan 16.7%, Fearon 16.2% & Murphy 15.4%).
People will vote, then people with count, then Mickey Brady will win for Sinn Féin, and then everybody will go home. It’s that simple.
Prediction: Sinn Féin HOLD
Current Odds: Sinn Fein 1/100, DUP 33/1, SDLP 60/1 Alliance 100/1, UUP 100/1
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Maggie O’Neill
It’s not every day someone that compares a Sinn Féin deputy leader to Maggie Thatcher. But there is perhaps a slight hint of the Leadership challenge launched by Michael Heseltine, and Thatcher’s performance in the subsequent contest, in the contest at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis last weekend.
In comparison this situation is moving in slow motion. O’Dowd announced his intention to stand back in the last days of the school summer holidays, and here we are in the mouth of Christmas finally reading the results. For those who want a reminder Sinn Féin have now confirmed the result was 493 v 241 in favour of O’Neill.
Like Thatcher in 1990, O’Neill has won the first ballot, and like Thatcher, O’Neill hasn’t done quite well enough. The rules required Thatcher to face a second vote in 1990, while O’Neill won’t be required to until next year’s Ard Fheis at the earliest, but O’Dowd having done as well as he has, the issue has not been satisfactorily put to bed.
While responded to O’Dowd’s challenge back in August, Sinn Féin veteran Francie Molloy told the BBC that "I'm disappointed people have put in the challenge at this time before the leadership has been able to start delivering, with the assembly back up and running".
Molloy shares the Mid-Ulster constituency with Michelle O’Neill, so it’s no surprise that he would want to back her. But even in that quote there is an acknowledgement that Michelle O’Neill hasn’t yet been able to deliver for Sinn Féin north of the border. Following a political colossus like Martin McGuiness was never going to be easy, and Molloy may feel she should be given more time, but she’s had the best part of 3 years already. She has been in her current post for 3 days fewer than Donald Trump.
The honeymoon period is over for Michelle O’Neill, and she will now have to start delivering. The margin of her victory over O’Dowd means that the time for excuses is over. The first test will come this afternoon when she sits down for an interview with Mark Devenport. Following that she will face a leader’s interview on The View with Mark Carruthers, and a TV debate with the other party leaders. The days when she will be forgiven for slightly deficient performances are over.
Part of the reason why her leadership doesn’t yet feel secure is that O’Neill wasn’t seen to put the challenge down herself. If she had toured the country, attending hustings events and meetings with local party groups, putting O’Dowd down by a 2 to 1 margin could have been seen as a decent victory. It may or may not be the case, but by not allowing a proper contest the party leadership have created an impression that they are worried O’Neill isn’t up to it.
Assuming Sinn Féin don’t send the actual party leader north to represent them, she can go some way to dispelling that impression by coming out on top in a debate with the other party leaders before the election. Colum Eastwood will now become a proxy for John O’Dowd, as can’t be kept hidden away from camera and microphones in the same way O’Dowd was. We will all be able to see if O’Neill is able to get her message across to the electorate when faced with an articulate nationalist rival. If she succeeds the decision to stifle a debate against O’Dowd will look no worse than foolish and may give her the authority she has lacked to date.
A by-election defeat in Eastbourne was one of the factors that corroded Thatcher’s authority, but it’s a general election that will either secure O’Neill’s future or seal her fate. If Sinn Féin match or better the 7 MPs they go into the election with the dust will be able to settle. Even a loss in Foyle will be OK if they can compensate by beating the DUP in North Belfast. But if they lose a seat or 2 the leadership speculation will intensify, and the next challenge won’t be described as a surprise.
In 1990 Thatcher received 204 votes to the 152 for Heseltine, but a combination of a poor election result for her party, and failure to defeat the leadership challenge convincingly enough, led to Ken Clarke advising her that the cabinet felt the game was up. If things don’t go as well as expected on December 12th, the Christmas break will offer time for senior figures in the party to think and to talk with others, and the New Year leads to thoughts of renewal in almost all walks of life.
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