Northern Ireland Assembly Election, 2022

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There isn't going to be a border poll any time soon so that isn't going to come into anyone's calculations.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Will there be any exit polling like we typically see in Westminster elections?

No. There isn't even exit polling for the Scottish or Welsh elections.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Kind of embarrassing honestly. The local papers don't have a ton of updates either, unfortunately.

Not really: proper exit polling (rather than the rubbish that's churned out in the USA) is quite expensive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's no prospect of a border poll or significant movement towards one in the near future - we're only hearing about it because the DUP are fearmongering on the issue as a dogwhistle.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I feel that your statement isn't true unless people share a very narrow idea of those two terms.

Near Future can be the next couple years, or the next 10-20. I don't think a border poll will happen in the next few years, but in 10? The political ground can shift quite dramatically.

I would mean the next few years - perhaps over the theoretical term of the new Assembly. The conditions for a Border Poll are extremely stringent in practice.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The issue is the detachment of a substantial and growing minority of Protestant voters from capital 'U' Unionism. Which is actually a return to long-dead historical norms, even if the parties that benefit are very different to the one that did back then - but Northern Ireland was a very different country at the time with a totally different economy (i.e. it had one).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

TUV ending with 1 seat despite getting 7.6% of first prefs is very very funny.
Shows you how STV does not guarantee proportional representation for your party if it is radioactive to vote transfers.

It has a certain... effect... in a way that is very subtle and very elegant.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

DUP don't want to power share in Catholic Nationalist led executive shocker.

It is worth noting that this is a purely symbolic matter as well: the powers of FM and DFM are identical. It's the whole #flegg business again.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, 'fun' hypothetical for you all: with these election results, what sort of government would be formed in Northern Ireland was not in Permanent Special Measures and not allowed full democracy for very good reason?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why hasn't all the goverment funding been able to create at least some sort of white collar industry ?

What company would want to move there? And the brain drain means that anyone minded to try that sort of thing themselves moves either South across the border or East across the sea.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The NILP didn't do a bad job of representing the non-sectarian vote (and it had a degree of cross-community appeal in parts of Belfast: people forget this) particularly given the electoral system and the Unionist Party's nasty habit of manufacturing a 'crisis' before every election, but it reflected a Northern Ireland that was very different to today: at the time the province still had significant industrial employment, including, critically, shipbuilding, and while it would be an error to exaggerate the extent of working class solidarity in that society, there was a degree of it, even if it was filtered through a sectarian lens. After thirty years of civil war, not a trace of this world remained: several surviving NILP figures (including David Bleakley, who was its most prominent figure) were actually members of the Alliance Party in the 1990s. These days the urban economy in Northern Ireland is dominated to the public sector to an extreme degree and while class certainly exists, there is no sense of a working class with an existence outside of the sectarian framework that dominates life, society and politics. In a situation like that, a broad-ranging liberal party that absolutely includes people who are essentially social democrats in all but name is the logical centre of gravity for non-sectarian politics, not a 'labour party', as much as that might be theoretically preferable to many of us.