It is currently difficult to imagine a left-wing coalition winning a Dáil majority. Nevertheless, uniting the left through the presidential campaign is planting the idea of an alternative to the Government, with potentially transformative results.
This is a lesson Stormont’s centre parties ought to note. The UUP, SDLP and Alliance should be finding ways to present themselves as the alternative to government led by Sinn Féin and the DUP, however unlikely that outcome might seem on current numbers. Instead, they are increasingly at each other’s throats.
Last weekend’s SDLP conference brought further escalation. In widely reported comments before the conference, leader Claire Hanna accused Alliance of squandering its recent growth, which saw it double its Assembly seats in 2022.
“That Alliance result was the most seismic change in Northern Ireland politics in a decade,” she told the Belfast Telegraph. “What difference has it made in atmosphere or outcomes at Stormont? None whatsoever.”
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In her address three days later, Hanna condemned “some who say that having our view on our future is tribal”.
This is a criticism of Alliance more often heard from the SDLP’s Assembly leader, Matthew O’Toole. He has complained that Alliance’s neutrality insults nationalists and unionists alike, by implying it is somehow disreputable to take a constitutional position.
The SDLP’s objections are high concept compared to the UUP, which seems to be in bad-tempered disagreement with Alliance on one issue after another, from policing to agriculture, summed up in complaints that Naomi Long’s party is becoming soft-nationalist or engaging in left-wing culture wars.
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The unspoken frustration from the unionist centre ground is that it assumed for decades Alliance was only a little to its left and unionist by default. Growth has stretched Alliance beyond those narrow and never quite accurate confines.
Alliance hit back at its critics last week, accusing them of being “preoccupied with petty politicking, manufactured wedge issues and divisive culture wars”.
“The public rightly expect us to be working together,” a spokesman said, in a nod to how jarring these squabbles must seem to voters.
Many people instinctively see the UUP, SDLP and Alliance as a form of electoral bloc. Evidence for this comes from transferred votes. In 2022, Alliance received the largest share of its transfers from the UUP, while the SDLP received the largest share of its transfers from Alliance. In fact, no party received more transfers from another than the SDLP did from Alliance. The UUP and the SDLP received 3 per cent of their transfers from each other – not much, but still vastly more than any other cross-community exchange.
The idea of the centre parties as a bloc was bolstered by events and efforts a decade ago. In 2016, all three took what was then the new option of entering official opposition. This was not embarked upon with much sense of collective enterprise, although then SDLP leader Colum Eastwood did address the UUP’s annual conference.
Multi-party opposition mainly galvanised Sinn Féin and the DUP, who decided make a virtue of having to govern alone by promoting themselves as responsible powersharing partners. Within six months this was exposed as a sham by the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal and devolution collapsed. In the subsequent election, UUP leader Mike Nesbitt called for transfers between his party and the SDLP. He had not agreed this with Eastwood, who declined to reciprocate.
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Nesbitt resigned after a disappointing overall result for the UUP. However, there was a significant upturn in transfers to the SDLP. Nesbitt returned to the helm last year, but there is no sign of him repeating his transfer call.
The electoral context today is very different. Alliance’s growth has made it a serious threat to the UUP and the SDLP, who of course take no votes from each other. Rivalry is exacerbated by first-past-the-post Westminster elections, where transfer friendliness is irrelevant. The SDLP has been forced into opposition at Stormont because it no longer has enough seats, complicating the question of whether a centrist bloc should operate inside or outside the executive. Alliance would be the leader of such a bloc, whereas before it would have been a minor player, with the other two leading it as equals. Both clearly find that prospect demeaning. Alliance’s growth has now peaked and it is falling in opinion polls, so everyone else smells blood.
The political context has also been transformed since Brexit, with nationalism in the ascendant and unionism in disarray. This has focused the SDLP on a united Ireland and the UUP on reforming unionism’s party system. Neither priority helps find common centre ground.
Yet Sinn Féin and the DUP face the same context and lead an executive together, or put on a show to that effect. If the centre parties cannot offer an alternative, then at Stormont at least, it becomes increasingly difficult to see what they are for.
