Could a revived Alliance Party revolutionise Northern Ireland’s fractured politics?

Every election in Northern Ireland is the same. Voters are not invited to choose between right and left, between Conservative, Socialist and Liberal. They are asked to assert their national identity as either British or Irish. Except this time. 

Last week, the electorate was given the opportunity to say they’d had enough of the endless Green/Orange feud and were ready to lend their support to politicians who put bread and butter issues first, without regard to national labels. And, up to a point, they responded. Aided by the single transferable vote system of PR under which the Stormont Assembly is elected, the non-sectarian, middle-of-the-road Alliance Party won 17 seats, making it the third-largest faction after Sinn Fein and the DUP. 

Commentators fell over themselves to declare that something historic had taken place. Applause for Alliance and its leader, Naomi Long, was near-universal. Now at last the 90-seat Assembly could concentrate on issues such as the state of the NHS, education, housing, energy prices, roads and railways without having to look over their shoulders at the Big Beasts of the past, notably Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, summoning them to the barricades. 

Well, it’s a nice thought. But how real is the change and what does it mean? Consider the arithmetic. 

Sinn Fein, formerly the political wing of the Provisional IRA, which regards the achievement of Irish unity, by fair means or foul, as the reason for its existence, won 29 per cent of first preference votes. The DUP, whose leaders wake each morning thanking God they are British, ended a badly mismanaged campaign with just over 21 per cent of the total. As a result, once all available transfers had been exhausted, Sinn Fein ended up with 27 seats and the DUP with 25. Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein leader in the North was now heir-apparent to the post of First Minister, with whoever the DUP nominated as her “co-equal” deputy. 

Further down the line, Alliance’s 17 seats arose out of a 13.5 per cent first-preference tally, to which might be added the 2 per cent who voted for the Greens. The aggregate vote for the middle way came to a little under 16 per cent, or less than one in six of the total. 

Progress, yes, but not exactly a revolution. Northern Ireland still has a long way to go before its politics could be described as even close to “normal”. 

We shouldn’t forget, though, that not all “moderates” are non-sectarian. The mildly progressive Ulster Unionist Party, for 50 years the sponsors of “A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People,”, won 11 per cent of the first-preference vote, giving it nine seats in the Assembly, and the overwhelmingly Catholic SDLP, with a first-round tally of 9 per cent, came away with seven. 

Worth noting, too, that Traditional Unionist Voice, which ideally would take the province back to the 1950s, when the Orange Order ruled the streets and Catholics knew their place, polled an impressive 7.6 per cent of the first-round vote, but wound up with just one seat.  

In terms of religious affiliation, the result of last week’s election was a tie: pro-Union 40 per cent, pro-Unity 40 per cent, with Alliance and others holding the balance. 

So what are we to make of this? First, Sinn Fein, having campaigned on “real” issues, celebrated its victory by immediately calling for a border poll, to be held no later than 2028, that it reckons will result in a United Ireland. Second, the DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, repeated his pledge not to nominate a Deputy First Minister unless the Northern Ireland Protocol is abandoned by the Westminster Government. 

Without a deputy, no new Executive can be formed and no serious work can be done. 

Donaldson also cast doubt on his party’s willingness to nominate a Speaker for the Assembly – an office that has to be filled before the body can begin its deliberations. Michelle O’Neill at once accused the DUP of holding the Assembly to ransom; Donaldson retorted that O’Neill was going Hell-for-leather for Irish unity. 

And where was the Alliance Party in all of this? Naomi Long castigated the leaders of the two big parties but was powerless to do anything about the chaos unfolding around her. All she can hope for is that voters learn the lesson and vote Alliance in greater numbers next time. 

For now, if Donaldson refuses to nominate himself or a colleague as Deputy First Minister, O’Neill is constitutionally prevented from taking up her own First Minister post. If no Speaker is elected (requiring a cross-party consensus), the Assembly itself cannot function, but must limp along, in purgatory, for 90 days, at which point the Secretary of State, no doubt rolling his eyes, must call new elections. 

It should be stressed that the Protocol, which keeps NI as part of the EU Single Market, is of little interest to most voters, who barely understand it and have other things to worry about. Northern Ireland voted strongly Remain in the 2016 EU referendum and the Protocol, we are told, even by unionists, hardly ever came up on the doorsteps. But to the DUP, whose past enthusiasm for a hard Brexit has ended up as an albatross around its neck, nothing is more important. It makes its members feel less British, just as its abandonment would make Sinn Fein feel cut off from Dublin and the EU. 

If the Protocol is dumped, as threatened by the UK foreign secretary Liz Truss, Donaldson will have to decide whether to take up the job of Deputy First Minister or to remain on as MP for Lagan Valley (thus avoiding the indignity of having to defer to Michelle O’Neill). In the latter event, a trusted confrere would be nominated in his place, most probably the former First Minister, Paul Given. Either way, with a post-Brexit trade border re-established between the two Irelands, Sinn Fein would waste no time in charging that the nationalist people had once again been betrayed by England. Even if O’Neill deigned to take up the post of First Minister, it would be to pursue an intentionally divisive Republican agenda. 

Still, what about those 17 seats won by Alliance. I mean, progress or what! 

Looking ahead, to the border poll that must eventually come, the role of Alliance will be the subject of much debate. The party’s claim is that it is neither Unionist nor nationalist, but neutral, concerned only with good government. Fair enough. But how does that play out in a binary poll? Will Long and her cohorts simply sit the campaign out? If they say that they only want to carry on with the business in hand, paying no heed to outside distractions, isn’t that a form of undeclared unionism? The status quo of the province is, after all, that of a nation within the UK. What is the point of having a casting vote if you decline to cast it? 

In the meantime, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have to weigh up the inevitable consequences of ditching the Protocol. Will the profound satisfaction this would give the DUP and the far-right of the Tory Party make up for the message it would send to the Catholic and Nationalist community, poised on the brink of becoming a majority of the electorate, that it must accept a restored Irish border and a definitive break with the EU?