Newton Emerson: Soldiers of a squandered northern destiny
Fianna Fáil appears to have missed boat for any merger with SDLP in the North
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin: An SDLP-Fianna Fáil merger has become like fusion power – a tiresomely familiar promise to solve all the world’s ills that never seems to get any closer. Photograph: Alan Betson
Fianna Fáil and the SDLP have left it too late for their merger. It is not as if they were short of time.
Leading SDLP figures were discussing the idea in public as far back as 2003, just after Stormont’s last major collapse. By 2008, with Stormont restored, Fianna Fáil had registered itself in the North and the SDLP had established a working group to consider what it termed “political realignment in Ireland”.