Opinion
Ben Lowry: Ten less noticed aspects of the Northern Ireland general election outcome
By Ben Lowry
Published 6th Jul 2024, 02:23 BST
Updated 6th Jul 2024, 13:46 BST
The first past the post electoral system has led to a totally distorted UK-wide election outcome. It could begin to hurt unionists.
The first past the post electoral system has led to a totally distorted UK-wide election outcome. It could begin to hurt Unionists.
It was described as a rather uneventful Northern Ireland election campaign, but it in the end it was an earthquake.
Plenty is written about those ballot box shocks in the rest of the paper, so I want to focus on 10 points that impact on NI, particularly unionists, but have received less attention in the response to the results:
1 The unionist vote share pulled a clear 3% ahead of nationalists.
As we report on page three, the combined unionist vote was 43% and the combined nationalist one 40%. This is very important given the glee with which unionists ceasing to become the largest unionist block at Stormont was met after the 2022 election. Unionists actually got more votes than nationalists then, albeit only slightly more, but even so it was a fact that was overlooked. Then, when nationalists for the first time got more votes than unionists in last year’s council elections it was hailed as yet another sign of the demise of unionism.
2 Turnout is a particular challenge for unionists.
Some observers claim that nationalists stay away from Westminster elections, but there is limited evidence for that. They also say that republicans voted Alliance in places to defeat a unionist and that is true. But such factors are offset by the increasing problem with low unionist turnout, such as the 50% turnout in Elmgrove in East Belfast on Thursday, from where I reported and much lower in some even more unionist inclined polling stations. This is due to low morale and is not easily reversed. I remember the 1980s when many nationalists did not vote until they realised they could win South Down and Newry and Armagh. Then they turned out in droves. Unionism is suffering the reverse trend.
3 The result within unionism was characterised above all by an anti DUP change.
That party remains by far the biggest of the three unionists parties but it lost enough support to lose three seats, and could have lost five. Had that happened, it would have been staring at ruin today, not just disaster.
I hope the party can be humble about what happened, as Rishi Sunak has been in Great Britain. That would show recognition of the fact that the DUP has been at times utterly ruthless to its rivals. Many of its politicians are excellent but some have seemed self serving at points, as happens in any party. Self reflection helps with recovery.
4 Alliance faces a dilemma going forward.
While they had a stunning win in Lagan Valley, their result in East Belfast was disappointing and even more so in North Down. I had begun to think that nothing would hurt them and even wondered if Naomi Long would have been hurt by going ahead with attending the New Ireland republican event (she didn’t in the end). But in fact such politics might indeed be harming them a bit in the east of Northern Ireland, as might their ultra liberal stance on trans and woke issues (cited to me by several voters in Elmgrove).
5 The arrest and charging of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson for sex offences and his political collapse could hardly have been worse timed.
That happened weeks before the snap election was called. Then in what I hope and trust was a complete quirk of fate, he appeared in court on the day before the election, dominating the headlines for 48 hours (from Tuesday afternoon when an additional number of charges was revealed to Thursday morning, 24 hours after he was back in court). I wonder if that contributed to the DUP decline in Lagan Valley, where he was so electorally popular.
6 The SDLP are Ulster Unionists are not finished and nowhere near.
So why do they not defend themselves more from the perpetual claim that they are on the verge of extinction? Their combined vote is always much bigger than Alliance. Again and again we see proof that up to 200,000 people want to register that they are nationalist or unionist but do not want to move to Sinn Fein or the DUP.
7 The collapse of the Scottish National Party.
The SNP won a staggering 56 out of 59 Scottish Westminster seats in 2015, in the months after the independence referendum. It shed many of those seats in 2017 and has now plunged to 9 seats.
A Scottish departure from the UK would be a huge problem for unionists in Northern Ireland so in that regard this has been a good election for those who want the UK to hold together.
8 A Labour landslide means of course that it can do as it pleases with Northern Ireland.
Keir Starmer and Hilary Benn have made clear that they are not interested in a border poll. Labour generally does not mess with unionists – it is the Conservative and Unionist Party that feels more able to dispense with unionists at key moments. But at the same time, few Labour politicians have much instinctive sympathy with unionists, so there are always perils for unionism.
9 The legacy of terrorism.
The Labour victory threatens the return of the outrageous approach to the legacy of the Troubles in which the security forces who prevented civil war are destroyed by lopsided probes and terrorists somehow keep escaping scrutiny proportionate to their overwhelming culpability. I have written so much about this before that I will only for now say this. Unionists have been partly to blame for letting this line be repeated that all the NI parties opposed the Legacy Act. Yes, they did, but unionists and Sinn Fein do not agree on legacy and this should have been made clear.
10 The UK urgently needs some form of proportional representation in Westminster elections, but there is no prospect of it.
The first past the post (FPP) system allows both the Conservatives and Labour to govern alone, even on small vote shares far below 50%. But I have always thought this to be a problem. It throws up some mainfestly unjust results such as the Liberals being grossly underrepresented in parliament proportionate to their vote since the war, and Ukip winning four million votes in 2015 but only one seat.
No political parties seem to care about such things until they are themselves affected. In the 1980s, FPP worked badly against nationalists. Now it is beginning to work against unionists.
In 2011 I was a strong supporter of the Additional Vote PR system proposed in the referendum, but the idea was decisively rejected. That decision will ultimately harm our democracy.
Keir Starmer has just won an overwhelming majority in the Commons based on 33.8% of the UK vote – this is travesty.
by okicurpn4m
2 comments
Decided on the ‘shite talk’ flair because Ben.
I’ll leave most critique to others but will note ‘I remember the 1980s when many nationalists did not vote until they realised they could win South Down and Newry’ is horseshit. There were massive nationalist votes in both and the predecessor Armagh for decades.
Lad has all those back issues of the oldest English newspaper in the world and clearly hasn’t read any articles but his own.
Weird mix of grifter and idiot.
Suppose he’ll be back to talking about the amount of daylight soon. Freaks him out every year. Arse.
“Could hardly have been worse timed” as if that’s the issue there. Absolutely of his rocker with no self awareness nor thoughts for the victims. Vile.