Denis Bradley: The North faces a strange election after strange times

The strangest thing about next week’s Assembly elections will be the strange results that will occur for the strangest of reasons.

That in no way implies that Churchill’s observation “as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again” can be retired from the lexicon of northern politics. In its own strange way, it is a confirmation that the “dreary steeples” will dominate the skyline again after the election is over.

A substantial part of the strangeness arises from the recent past and the current state of the world. Covid, lockdown, war in Europe, to name a few of many unusual events, leaves everyone’s feet a little less secure on the ground.

Political parties have had little choice but to occupy the ground where the concerns and the worries of their voters currently dwell and that ground is, for now, firmly rooted in bread and butter and a warm house.

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The SDLP have their travails in reverse. The quality of their candidates is trumpeted by the party and commentators alike

Confirmation of that came with Sinn Féin, who are expecting and hoping to do well, declaring that this election was not about identity, that a border poll would be for another day further down the road.

The SDLP had already got on to that ground and normally it takes the Shinners a few weeks to catch up, but this time they got there within days. Even the prospect, many say the probability, of Sinn Féin becoming the largest party and thus a republican, for the first time, becoming the First Minister, has not produced a full-frontal congratulatory campaign.

Sinn Féin sense the strangeness of the times and assess that their vote will probably reduce but that their position will be enhanced because the DUP vote will reduce even further. They are not expecting the meltdown within the DUP that might have been expected a few months back, but they detect enough division within the party itself and enough drift to the even more anti-protocol Jim Allister TUV party to result in the DUP having a worst election than Sinn Féin.

They are also blooding a few young inexperienced candidates for the future but that leaves them vulnerable, especially in Derry where the enforced standing down of Martina Anderson has resulted in the quiet withdrawal of campaign support from large and long- established republican families.

The SDLP have their travails in reverse. The quality of their candidates is trumpeted by the party and commentators alike. Even many Sinn Féin voters would acknowledge the qualitative difference. But they are condemned, like Sisyphus, to keep rolling the stone up the hill knowing, after all these years, that the triumph of the summit will not be theirs.

Change is probably the only constant in the north. It is happening in the entrails of demographics and the entrails of psychological identity

They know the seats that they are more than likely to retain but transfers will decide many of the fifth seats that will slightly increase or slightly decrease their representation.

Another point of interest is the growth of the Alliance Party. In the last few elections, it has attracted votes from nationalists and unionists alike, even gaining a small foothold west of the Bann where once it was considered a foreign entity. There is also uncertainty but much interest in which side of the political divide those votes are coming from, in other words is it unionism or nationalism that is haemorrhaging most to what is being described as the centre ground.

Some see this as the great hope in that it appears to fracture the binary nature of northern politics, of every election being a disguised census between unionism and nationalism. This movement to the centre, assumably, will create a Northern Ireland identity devoid of the narrowness of the past.

The phenomenon of subconsciously redirecting emotions and attachments could easily end up in a rehash of the old joke of being a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew. A surging Alliance Party, sitting third in the hierarchy behind Sinn Féin and the DUP could well find its candidates being asked; “Are you a nationalist Alliance or a unionist Alliance?”

Which brings us back to Churchill and the dreary steeples. He spoke those words at a time of great change in Europe. Change is probably the only constant in the north. It is happening in the entrails of demographics and the entrails of psychological identity. That change will ultimately resolve many problems including the dominance of the dreary steeples. But not just yet.

The strangeness of these times and this election is that those of us who vote may well be casting a vote that ensures that there will be no devolved government in the North. After the election and at a pace allowed by the cost-of-living crises, the narrative and the political parties will find their way back to the unresolved constitutional question. If, as expected, Sinn Féin poll less bad than the DUP, then the likelihood of a new Executive, a new government is highly unlikely.

Denis Bradley is a journalist and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board