In 1998, weeks before the Good Friday Agreement, a colleague and I wrote that “Northern Irish society is far more complex than the stereotypical ethnic schism between Catholic/Irish/nationalist and Protestant/unionist/British might imply”.
Similar, to the Bob Monkhouse joke “when I was young people laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian, they aren’t laughing now”.
That constant observation of change was part-delivered in an election of diverse accommodation across communities. Evidenced by the growth of Alliance who received transfers across the schism, a pro-union community that will not merely vote to keep the other side out, and unambiguous consensus for change and reform. The slow burner of generational trend-lines becoming more important than electoral cycles.
If we dig below the exterior of election results, we find that consensus within recent Institute of Irish Studies polls. The people that the DUP and Sinn Féin represent believed the last Assembly performed poorly compared to previous iterations and desired a voting system in which 60 per cent of MLAs agreeing legislative reform was sufficient for cross-community support.
The people, despite their diversity and variant constitutional views, assert as one when they demand reform and the setting of a budget that will literally save lives.
It is a gross misnomer to think that a DUP or Sinn Féin voter does not want education reform, reduced waiting lists, safer communities, and social prosperity. Identity politics may, for now, remain dominant but behind that sits expectations of better governance.
False dawn
The SDLP had been buoyed in 2019 Westminster election but it had been a false dawn. Sinn Féin in Derry were unpopular, and the SDLP won in South Belfast because Sinn Féin stood aside. Sinn Féin fixed the Derry problem and some SDLP voters, possibly annoyed at the pact with Sinn Féin, headed over to Alliance.
Doug Beattie showed courage. He brought forward anti-conversion therapy legislation, challenged the edifice of sectarian politics but was undone by protocol politics.
The DUP vote managed and got close in terms of its previous seat allocation, but it had through attacking the idea of Michelle O’Neill as First Minister restored Sinn Féin fortunes.
The rise of Sinn Féin by 1 per cent and the decline of the SDLP means we have not taken a giant leap forward toward Irish unification.
Sinn Féin ran a quiet campaign. Gone are the days of an ardfheis in Tallaght leisure centre. It launched its campaign around cosmopolitan St Anne’s Square in tailored outfits not far from the tomb of Carson. Yet the brand of unionism that is intransigent and unyielding yet again performed in a manner that mobilised Sinn Féin voters.
The DUP hammered on about the protocol to stop the TUV’s Jim Allister, who rallied electorally, but haplessly returns to Stormont on his own. Having lost socially liberal voters between 2017 and 2019, the DUP had thought little about getting them back. It had the right of unionism irrespective of a pro-union people who provide majority support for marriage equality and are pro-choice. Sinn Féin knows its demographic while the DUP pursues one that is declining.
Progression
When all is said, and done and despite the imagination of the people who want shared government and progression, we will not have a proper return to government if we do not have a joint and practical problem-solving approach to the protocol.
To persuade future electoral growth, North and South, Sinn Féin must now provide an act of immense political generosity in joining the DUP to provide an evidence-base upon which to respond to the protocol. There are obvious issues within, proven by the EU changing laws around the movement of medicines, offering 50 per cent reductions in paperwork and 80 per cent reductions in veterinary checks. Those issues should concern all of us.
Sinn Féin and the DUP support the sovereignty of their respective people so joint working to deliver democratic accountability around emerging laws and regulations is apt.
The electors of both made it clear, in our recent poll, wanting executive members to jointly seek mitigations from the EU. At the time of foodbanks, rising costs of living and global insecurity each must deliver a leadership for problem-solving.
The people have made it very clear regarding their support for consensus-based headship. Further proof some 25 years after the Belfast Agreement that the people increasingly sit beyond the “stereotypical ethnic schism”. As JKF summed when in a political crisis “generosity should be able to unite regardless of party politics”. Generosity or sterile and wearied broken governance have obvious and very different outcomes.
Peter Shirlow is a professor at the Institute of Irish Studies in the University of Liverpool
