Northern Ireland General Discussion

[Flyersfan232]

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?

If Alliance were to be the largest party, then that complicates things, because they'd get to appoint the First Minister.  (The legislation is quite confusing, but I think that's right.)  Then the Deputy First Minister would be appointed by the largest party of the largest designation, which might well mean Sinn Féin (if Alliance's gains were mostly from Unionism, meaning that there were more Nationalists than Unionists overall).  I'm not sure Unionists would stand being frozen out of those two posts altogether.

Will this hurt the TUV?

"This" as in Poots winning the DUP leadership?  You'd think so, as he would be more in tune with the sort of voter who might defect in that direction than Foster is.

Are alliance de facto unionists though? Also how to uk labour supporters in Northern Ireland who are unionist vote?

[Flyersfan232]

Are alliance de facto unionists though? Also how to uk labour supporters in Northern Ireland who are unionist vote?

Alliance are not Unionists with a big U, and do not designate as such in the Assembly.  (They're "Other", together with the Greens and People Before Profit.)  There is a range of views on the constitutional issue within the party, though it's usually been the case, and probably still is, that their supporters would mostly vote for the status quo.

(For those who don't already know this, all MLAs have to "designate" as either "Unionist", "Nationalist", or "Other".  The rules for choosing which party gets to nominate the First Minister and Deputy First Minister refer to the collective strengths of these designations as well as to the parties.)

As for the second question, left-right politics isn't really a thing in Northern Ireland so it's hard to tell.  There have been left of centre Unionist (big U) politicians, including some, like former North Down MP Robert McCartney, who were quite hardline.  (He applied for the Labour whip after being elected in 1995.)  His UUP successor Sylvia Hermon left the party rather than join the alliance with the Tories in 2010.  I'd guess that the more strongly left of centre Protestant voters tend towards Alliance, though.  (Or the Greens.)

if the labour party in the uk started to contest the in northern ireland would that be electly viable?