Newton Emerson: SF likely to weaken united Ireland argument in elections

All my life, elections in Northern Ireland have been derided as proxy Border polls. So-called right-thinking people have pleaded and hoped for the great unwashed to vote on "real issues", only to be cruelly disappointed.

Hence there is something at once realistic, depressing and thrillingly rude about Sinn Féin making next month’s council elections, to be held on May 2nd, specifically about a Border poll.

Not for the Shinners mere promises to take out the bins – still just about all Northern Ireland’s councillors are trusted to manage.

The party is campaigning for “a referendum on Irish unity in the next short number of years”. This dominates its manifesto, election broadcasts, literature and posters.

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The DUP has responded by boasting of how efficiently it takes out the bins in contrast to “those seeking a divisive Border poll”, which means battle has been joined. May 2nd is a vote on a vote for a united Ireland.

On the face of it, this is a blunder by republicans. Although the constitutional confrontation will help ratchet up Sinn Féin and DUP support, the total mandate for a Border poll itself will do well to reach a third of votes cast.

In the last council election, in 2014, Sinn Féin secured 22.7 per cent of first preferences. It will do a lot better this time. In the last two elections of any type held in Northern Ireland, for Stormont and Westminster in March and June 2017, Sinn Féin scored 27.9 per cent and 29.4 per cent respectively– an expected minimum for next month’s performance.

Brexit backdrop

New party Aontu is also campaigning for a Border poll, plus immediate joint authority just to be on the safe side, while People Before Profit is calling for a Border poll due to embarrassment at backing Brexit. Together they might win 2 per cent.

But the SDLP is conspicuously not mentioning a Border poll in its campaign. Leader Colum Eastwood has ruled it out before reconciliation within Northern Ireland and Sinn Féin has crucified him for doing so, meaning the SDLP vote cannot be counted towards a poll mandate.

The SDLP is conspicuously not mentioning a Border poll in its campaign

The SDLP won 14.5 per cent in 2014 but dropped to under 12 per cent in 2017’s elections. Sinn Féin gains next month will eat into that further. So the total nationalist vote could top out at about 42 per cent, as it did in 2017, with a quarter of that very cautious on a Border poll. This can hardly be claimed as a ringing endorsement.

The centrist Alliance and Green bloc is seen as decisive in any future vote on unification. However, both parties are campaigning to reject Border-poll-type politics, so their total next month will count against it.

Where Sinn Féin’s approach could really backfire is if it further galvanises unionism.

Unionists lost their overall majority in March 2017 for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, with their combined total falling to 45.8 per cent.

Ironically, this was the first and probably last hurrah of “real issue” voting in the Belfast Agreement era. Significant numbers of unionists, still wrongly secure in their majoritarianism, boycotted the DUP or switched to Alliance in response to the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal. But the surging republican vote gave them the fright of their lives and, in the unexpected Westminster election three months later, they rallied to the flag, taking the unionist total back up to 49.2 per cent.

Scenario of unknowns

Sinn Féin grandstanding on Irish unity did a lot to drive that retrenchment. It would not take much more of the same effect to push unionism back over the magic 50 per cent, where a Border poll returns to being officially pointless.

Right-thinking people continue to wonder if the DUP will be punished by unionists for mishandling Brexit

There are a lot of unknowns in this scenario, including the third of the electorate who generally do not vote, plus two more years of demographic change and nationalist exasperation. Right-thinking people continue to wonder if the DUP will be punished by unionists for mishandling Brexit, although that hope must be as deluded as always. The likeliest outcome of next month is that Sinn Féin will strengthen its hand but weaken its argument, emerging with a higher vote yet branding a Border poll with a relatively low number.

That assumes Sinn Féin actually wants an imminent vote on a united Ireland, of course. For the purposes of stirring the pot, demanding a poll and not getting one is even better than getting one. But is pot-stirring still in the party’s interest? If Sinn Féin’s vote tops out at about the 30 per cent mark it reached in 2017, then what?

Stormont is down and northern dysfunction plays badly in the Republic, where it feeds into a vague sense the North is a mess Sinn Féin is partly responsible for creating.

It is not plausible the South wants that on its plate in the next few short years. The SDLP will do badly next month, but Eastwood will be vindicated.