Northern Ireland General Discussion

[LabourJersey]

There's been some discussion of this in the main UK thread, perhaps because it had been forgotten that this thread existed.

The front-runner appears to be Lagan Valley MLA and Young Earth creationist Edwin Poots.  Also near the top of the list are Jeffrey Donaldson, MP for Lagan Valley who was once in the UUP, and Gavin Robinson, MP for Belfast East (nb no relation of Peter and Iris).  Poots is perceived as more hardline, Robinson as more moderate.

An MP would either have to resign their Westminster seat or nominate someone else to serve as First Minister, as the First Minister would have to be in the Assembly and double jobbing is banned.  The electorate is just the MPs, MLAs, and I think also their members of the House of Lords; unless there's a sudden rule change this is not a mass membership vote.

Given the machinations and the ideological lines, would it be right to think Poots is the frontrunner, then?

I imagine he wouldn't be popular beyond the confines of the DUP base, given his brand of social conservatism (saying Arlene Foster needs to focus on being a wife?).

[LabourJersey]

Next May (or earlier, as the case may be), there will be elections held to the unicameral Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont.

I know it is a year out, but how is it looking?  

At the moment I'd guess that Alliance will make gains at the expense of Unionists, and that Sinn Féin could well be the largest party.  The DUP's choice of leader might give the UUP an opportunity to recover some lost ground amongst more moderate (and less fundamentalist) Protestants, but I'm not sure they're in a state to take it.

A LucidTalk poll in January actually had Alliance on 18% and challenging the DUP (19%) for second place overall (with Sinn Féin ahead on 24%).  It also had the TUV (the ones who think the DUP is too moderate) on 10%, not far behind the UUP (12%) and SDLP (13%).  But polling in Northern Ireland is not easy.

What would happen if Alliance were to win the most votes in next year's elections? I guess it's not that improbable is the distribution is 24 SF, 19 DUP and 18 Alliance.

How would that effect the power sharing agreement? would it throw a wrench into the already difficult process of forming a government?

[LabourJersey]

That's an almost existentially bad poll for Poots.

WTF did the DUP grandees think they were doing picking him ahead of Donaldson?

Those DUP higher-ups really don't seem like sharp political minds.

[LabourJersey]

Paul Givan has been nominated to be the new First Minister.

Lagan Valley assembly member Paul Givan has been announced as the DUP's nominee to be NI's new first minister.

Mr Givan would replace Arlene Foster, who was ousted as Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader in April after an internal revolt.

Edwin Poots, Stormont's agriculture minister, replaced her as DUP leader amid tensions within the party.

A number of DUP members have quit over concerns about the party's direction since Mr Poots' election last month.

Mr Givan had been widely tipped to replace Mrs Foster.

He was first co-opted to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2010 and, aged 39, he will be Northern Ireland's youngest first minister.

Will Poots get promoted in the NI Cabinet for being party leader, or is that completely separate from the cabinet process (If I understand it correctly each party in the power sharing can pick their people for a specified number of cabinet posts, right?)

[LabourJersey]

King Charles III (assuming he has a similar lifespan as his late mother) could be the last British monarch to visit Northern Ireland while it is still part of the United Kingdom:

Charles lll makes maiden visit to Northern Ireland as English king

Perhaps, but reunification is not a certainty, not even now. The fallout of Brexit and the death of a popular shared monarch makes it a lot more likely than it was before 2016, for sure. But it would be a long, drawn out and ugly process that may not even be in the Republic's interest (at least in the short-term).

Will be fascinating to follow over the next few years, though.

[LabourJersey]

The Alliance is to a large extent unionist, yes? I consider the Alliance to be a unionist party even if there are some members who support reunification.

Alliance is not a Unionist party.  It is fundamentally an anti-sectarianism party and its members and supporters hold a range of views on the constitutional issue; I suspect that pragmatic support for the status quo, combined with irritation at the disruption to the status quo caused by Brexit, is the median position in the party, but that is not what is meant by "Unionism" in a Northern Ireland context.

I find Alliance to be an interesting party because of what you're describing. Is it fair to says that its supporters are younger than those of SF/DUP etc, or does it cut across the age divides?

[LabourJersey]

Bumping this since NI has a pretty eventful Thursday coming up: a massive public service strike and the deadline for some sort of power sharing agreement at Stormont (though my understanding is that this deadline can be pushed back).

Genuinely curious to hear more on these from our NI posters.

[LabourJersey]

As predicted, the talks yesterday seem to have been unproductive: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-67957520

Somewhat more surprisingly, the head of the NI Civil Service has gone public with a call for Heaton-Harris to release the funds for wage increases without conditions.

Current predictions are that about 170,000 workers will be out on strike on Thursday, which is very nearly 10% of the total population and more than 20% of adults with a job.

Wow - I knew civil service comprises an unusually high % of Northern Irish workers, but 20% is something.

Is there a sense that this could be a long and ugly strike? Or is it seen as more of a shorter expression of exasperation from the NI people?

[LabourJersey]

The DUP is now under particular pressure to return to power sharing - personally I doubt that will happen until the Westminster elections, but who knows.

It also seems (to my outsider, not-from-"Norn Iron" eyes) that the DUP base doesn't want them to return to power sharing because they don't want or like power sharing, period.

[LabourJersey]

By this point, I view the Democratic Unionist Party (and other unionist hardliners) with the same scorn and contempt I have for the Republican Party here at home.  Sore losers the lot of them:

N.Ireland to miss deadline to break political impasse

Now that they are losing their grip on power, is the DUP deliberately trying to shred the Good Friday Agreement? 

The DUP never liked the GFA in the first place - that's the problem. And their mentality has only hardened as Brexit created the Irish Sea Border (or whatever name Sunak is calling it now) and as SF became the largest party in the last Assembly election.

They represent a bloc of voters who aren't happy with the GFA and are scared about their future and their communities.

[LabourJersey]

There was the brief "Chuckle Brothers" phase after Paisley went into government, though of course some of the DUP base didn't like that either.

The rules need to be changed so that if a party with the right to nominate the FM/DFM refuses to do so the right is passed on to another party. That could be done so that it goes to the next largest party of their designation (thus giving the UUP the chance to show that there is a point to their continued existence) or it could be done so that the calculations are completely re-done ignoring the boycotting party, which I think would give the DFM position to Alliance.

But that fundamentally defeats the purpose of power sharing. You wouldn’t have a government supported by both Unionists and Nationalists. Like it or not the UUP hasn’t represented the views of most Protestants for 20 years now. And we know from history what unionists do when they feel “unrepresented” in government.

I would argue that the purpose of power sharing is to ensure that NI can have devolved government without going back to the 1921-72 situation of it being completely dominated by one community. And you can do that without giving the DUP and Sinn Féin effective vetos on the formation of any executive at all. I don't mind giving the largest party in each community the right to be in an executive if it wants to be, but if they wish to say no to that then I don't think they should be able to stop anyone else doing the job.

There is an argument that with Unionism having lost its majority and Nationalism not particularly likely to gain one in the near future it might be possible to try having no rules at all other than requiring majority support in the Assembly. I'm not sure that NI is really ready for that, though.

I agree with this. The point of a power-sharing government is to govern, after all.

The DUP doesn't want to govern. We can't let a place with 1.9 million people just exist without a meaningful government and administration.

Let UUP represent the Unionist bloc - the fault is on the DUP here.

[LabourJersey]

There is talk that "this time, it might be different" - but I will believe it when I see it.

Zeno's Paradox, power sharing edition!

[LabourJersey]

This is the first time I've heard of Jamie Bryson.

I was better off not knowing Jamie Bryson.

[LabourJersey]

Donaldson is claiming that this deal  "will remove checks for goods moving within the UK and remaining in Northern Ireland, and guarantee unfettered access for Northern Ireland businesses to the UK market"

How would this work, if NI is part of the single market/has no hard border? Is this lip service? Is the hard border back on?

[LabourJersey]

Doesn't sound too dissimilar from the experiences of American colonialists when they visited the mother country prior to the war for independence:

The most effective cure for Northern Irish unionism? Attitudes in England

This is the saddest part (or most pitiful part) of Unionism for me; the NI unionist community are so deeply loyal to a people that by and large do not care about them. At all.

Though admittedly, you could also say that the ROI doesn't particularly care about them, either.

[LabourJersey]

Neither Alliance nor SF in Northern Ireland really have a housing policy worth the name, so I'm not sure where you've got that from.

Mind you, housing is less of an issue here than it is elsewhere in the British Isles - although high compared to the historical norm, the multiple of house prices to earnings is lower than in either Ireland or GB and because the population is relatively stagnant, you don't need to build as many houses to stand still. Arguably the biggest housing issue* is the quality of a lot of the housing stock, especially in poorer districts of Belfast and Derry.

*As opposed to issues around housing schemes, which are generally not about housing per se but about either antisocial behaviour or not wanting to live near themmuns.

My understanding has been that housing is a much more salient issue in the Republic right now than in the North or in the UK - is that true?

It seems that the centrality of Dublin to the economy coupled with short supply is doing a number on housing and cost of living for the ROI. Reinforces my belief that in a hypothetical united Ireland (which again I'm not fully sold on), hopefully the island can have more poles of economic activity for Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Derry etc rather than just one megalopolis of Dublin.

[LabourJersey]

I know the Donaldson news is on the UK general thread, but I'm curious to hear from the NI posters about the ramifications for Stormont/NI here.