General election '24: Northern Ireland

While an executive was established in Belfast in February, there has been little action other than wrangling over the Windsor Framework: now the parties bid for votes

Introduction

At the beginning of 2024, Northern Ireland elbowed its way to the front of the United Kingdom’s political consciousness after some time on the margins. Elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2022 had produced a dramatic result, with Sinn Féin winning 27 of the 90 seats available and becoming the largest party for the first time in Northern Ireland’s 100-year history. There were still more unionist than nationalist MLAs, 37 to 35, with the Alliance Party’s 17 representatives and Gerry Carroll of the Trotskyist People Before Profit designated as “other”, but the result gave Sinn Féin the right to nominate the first minister and was a hugely symbolic development. In September that year, the publication of data from the 2021 census revealed that, for the first time, those identifying themselves as Catholics outnumbered Protestants by a small margin, 45.7 per cent compared to 43.5 per cent.

The putative first minister was Sinn Féin’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill. She spoke in inclusive terms about the immediate future.

Today ushers in a new era which I believer presents us all with an opportunity to reimagine relationships in this society on the basis of fairness, on the basis of equality and the basis of social justice. Irrespective of religious, political or social backgrounds my commitment is to make politics work.

However, the first order of business for the newly elected assembly had to be the nomination of a speaker. Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin had held the post since January 2020, but he—or any other candidate—required cross-community support for his nomination under the Standing Orders of the assembly. The Democratic Unionist Party, which had come a close second to Sinn Féin with 25 MLAs, refused to participate in the nomination. The party had withdrawn from the Northern Ireland Executive in February 2022 in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol agreed between the UK and the European Union, and its leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, continued to insist on the scrapping of the protocol before it would allow the assembly to proceed and therefore a new executive to be formed.

This stasis persisted for months, then years. In February 2023, the UK government and the EU agreed a modification to the protocol known as the Windsor Framework, which I discussed here, designed to address the DUP’s complaints, ease friction on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and underline Northern Ireland’s place in the Union, but the DUP still refused to participate in the devolved assembly. It was not until January this year, as I wrote in The Spectator, that the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, produced a deal which persuaded the DUP to rejoin the political process. The government set out further changes in a command paper, Safeguarding the Union, and also promised extra funding for the executive once it was established.

Exactly two years after the DUP’s Paul Givan had resigned as first minister and brought down the previous executive, the assembly nominated Michelle O’Neill to the office and Emma Little-Pengelly to be deputy first minister. There was widespread celebration and relief, although unionists were aware of the significance of a nationalist becoming first minister not only a nationalist, but the leader of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA. However, the leadership of the DUP felt that the UK government had provided sufficient assurances to allow them to participate in government, and to address the challenges facing Northern Ireland. I said at the time in The Spectator, CapX and City A.M. that the new executive had to show it could make real progress on bread-and-butter issues, principally the economy.

A house divided

Donaldson’s decision was not unanimously welcomed within the DUP. Although the deal was agreed by the party’s executive, several senior members opposed a Humble Address to the King endorsing the deal when it was debated in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Among those speaking against the arrangements were Sammy Wilson, who had just resigned as DUP chief whip, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, former deputy leader of the party, and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown. Beyond the DUP, the deal was bitterly opposed by Traditional Unionist Voice and its determined leader, Jim Allister KC, and prominent loyalist campaigner and activist Jamie Bryson.

Rejoining the devolved government was part of a broader attempt by Donaldson to revitalise the DUP after a difficult period and entrench its position as the leading party of unionism. At the end of February, he gave a speech in which he attempted to reach beyond narrow sectarian boundaries and argue that an economically successful and prosperous Northern Ireland was the best safeguard the Union could have. He seemed to be winning the argument: while opponents of the deal remained as vehement as ever, polling suggested most DUP members supported the party’s involvement in the executive.

Everything changed on 28 March. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland on charges of rape and other historic sexual offences, with his wife Eleanor being arrested for aiding and abetting. He resigned as leader of the DUP the following day, while maintaining he would strenuously contest the charges. This week he announced he would not seek re-election to the House of Commons. Gavin Robinson, MP for Belfast East, was appointed interim leader by party officers.

The executive

It is hard to say that the executive has been frenetic since its establishment. There has been no shortage of appointments to various quangos and public bodies, and the first minister and deputy first minister visited Washington DC in March. At the end of April, the finance minister, Dr Caoimhe Archibald, announced that a budget had been agreed for 2024/25; she has also agreed an interim fiscal framework with HM Treasury which secured an additional £24 million and will include a review of the executive’s funding structures. The health minister, Robin Swann, will step down imminently to fight South Antrim for the Ulster Unionist Party at the general election, while the economy minister, Conor Murphy, resigned earlier in May on grounds of ill health.

The executive is still to publish a programme for government, however, despite the assembly agreeing to a motion calling for such a document tabled by the leader of the opposition, Matthew O’Toole, 100 days after the executive was constituted. There are still public sector strikes over pay, and, despite strong pressure from the UK government, the executive has ruled out introducing household water charges to address significant underinvestment in Northern Ireland Water, a state-owned agency.

Public opinion on the executive’s performance is tepid. Michelle O’Neill was rated 53/100 for her performance, with her deputy Emma Little-Pengelly only one point behind on 52/100. But the executive as a whole only scored 39/100, hardly a ringing endorsement. Perhaps the best that can be argued is that the executive is still functioning, and that seems to be reflecting equally, if only moderately, well on its two leading figures. It seems unlikely that either Sinn Féin or the DUP will be able to eke much advantage out of the executive’s activities. Both have a vested interest in devolved government working, though for opposite reasons: Sinn Féin will seek to portray a functioning executive as proof that ties with the UK should be cut, while the DUP need to show that the constitutional status quo can deliver effective administration.

The state of the parties

The latest polling, conducted in mid-May, shows the Sinn Féin remains the most popular party, albeit on only 29 per cent of the vote. The DUP has slipped further behind to just 21 per cent, while the Alliance is on 15 per cent. The two former mainstream parties, the UUP and the SDLP, are second-order players on 11 and eight per cent, while the hard-line TUV is also on eight per cent. A very crude calculation from those numbers suggests that unionist parties retain a slight advantage over nationalists.

The party strengths at Westminster tip the balance marginally towards the nationalists. The DUP has seven seats, plus former leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson sitting as an independent, while Sinn Féin have seven and the SDLP two. The Alliance has one MP. (It should be noted that Sinn Féin MPs do not take their seats in the House of Commons, because they refuse to take the oath of allegiance to the Crown. However, in December 2001, the House voted to allow Members who did not formally take their seats to use the facilities of the Parliamentary Estate and claim costs and allowances like any other Member.)

At the time of writing, we know that four of the 18 MPs are standing down. Donaldson will vacate Lagan Valley, while three Sinn Féin Members will not contest their seats: Francie Molloy (Mid-Ulster), Mickey Brady (Newry and Armagh) and Michelle Gildernew (Fermanagh and South Tyrone). Three Members have majorities under 2,000: Chris Hazzard (Sinn Féin) in South Down, John Finucane (Sinn Féin) in Belfast North and, critically, the DUP’s interim leader Gavin Robinson in Belfast East. Hazzard and Finucane would seem safe, given that the polls are running marginally in Sinn Féin’s favour, but Robinson’s position is much more precarious. Not only must he contend with internal DUP divisions over the party’s deal with the UK government, but his main challenger is the Alliance Party, which is polling strongly. The candidate in 2019 was the Alliance leader, Naomi Long, who held the seat from 2010 to 2015. She is currently minister of justice in the Northern Ireland Executive (having held the same office 2020-22) and may challenge Robinson again.

The perennial question of cooperation between unionist parties has been raised again. The UUP’s leader, Doug Beattie, has ruled out any agreements or pacts and confirmed that his party will field candidates in all 18 constituencies. Outgoing health minister Robin Swann will challenge the DUP’s Paul Girvan in South Antrim, where the majority in 2019 was only 2,689 and the seat was held by the UUP in 2015-17; the Alliance candidate will be John Blair, currently deputy speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The most high-profile inter-unionist fight will be in North Down, currently held by Dr Stephen Farry of the Alliance. The UUP candidate is Colonel Tim Collins, who became famous during the Iraq War in 2003 when he was commanding officer of 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, and have a stirring and now-legendary eve-of-battle speech to his soldiers. (It was superbly recreated in a BBC drama by Kenneth Branagh and is worth watching.) However, Alex Easton MLA, formerly of the DUP, is standing as an independent unionist candidate, and his former party has yet to decide if it will stand aside for him or field a third unionist. If there is a DUP challenger, Farry is surely home and dry: his majority in 2019 over Easton, still in the DUP, was only 2,968 but a three-way split of the unionist vote (there are virtually no nationalist voters in North Down) will almost certainly be fatal to all their chances. Even a scrap between Collins and Easton will probably be enough to keep Farry in place.

In general terms, despite Beattie’s firm line, Robinson has not ruled out all co-operation.

There are a couple of seats for which I think there is still an opportunity for unionist co-operation. And I’ll engage in those conversations, as I have done over the last year, positively and productively. There is a good opportunity here but there’s a choice for the people of Northern Ireland… We know that there are many within our community that seek co-operation and want to see unionists working together. They don’t like the idea that in an election such as this individuals could go forward and split the vote and remove their voice from Westminster, because this is the opportunity, when the people of Northern Ireland right throughout our society get to make sure they have the strongest voice for this province in our national parliament.

These opportunities must be limited. The hardline TUV, led by Jim Allister, has concluded a formal agreement with Reform UK, under which they will field “agreed candidates” and are united in opposition to the Windsor Framework and the Northern Ireland Protocol. However, TUV’s base is low: it won only 7.6 per cent of the vote at 2022’s assembly election, with only Allister being elected for North Antrim, and it proposed no candidates at the 2019 general election. There was one challenger in 2017, Timothy Gaston, who stood against Ian Paisley Jr in North Antrim, but he won only 3,282 votes, 6.8 per cent of the total, in the DUP heartland. A spokesman claimed that TUV’s memorandum of understanding with Reform UK “gives people the opportunity to vote for a real national movement which stands up for restoring the United Kingdom and is clear that there can be no sea border”. Its only likely effect, however, will be to drain some votes away from the DUP. Even if it does not achieve much more than seven or eight per cent of the vote, that could pose a genuine challenge to some MPs like Robinson, Girvan and Jonathan Buckley MLA, replacing Donaldson in Lagan Valley, where Sorcha Eastwood for the Alliance is expected to mount a strong bid.

The Westminster options

The current secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, has recently announced that he will not contest the general election. The post has, unfortunately, been something of a revolving door: Heaton-Harris is the eighth incumbent since 2010, and there were six secretaries of state in the 13 years of the Labour government. The most fleeting was Shailesh Vara, who unexpectedly held the post in the last two months of Boris Johnson’s premiership in 2022, while Theresa Villiers managed nearly four years between 2012 and 2016. As I wrote in The Irish Times in July 2022, Westminster politicians largely ignore Northern Ireland now, having assumed that the 1998 Belfast Agreement had effectively ‘solved’ the problem and now finding to their annoyance that the province still occupies government time and energy. I suggested that “for many ministers at the Northern Ireland Office it has been simply a task of maintaining order and keeping noise to a minimum”.

Being a minister in the Northern Ireland Office is not generally something which is keenly sought. One of the few enthusiastic volunteers has been Sir Conor Burns, Conservative MP for Bournemouth West, who was born to a nationalist, Catholic family in north Belfast and “happily considers” himself Irish, British and Northern Irish: he was minister of state for Northern Ireland and Boris Johnson’s special representative to the US for the Northern Ireland Protocol in 2021-22, only the second minister in the department’s 50-year history to come from Northern Ireland (the first was the late Lord Mawhinney, also Belfast-born, who was under-secretary of state 1986-90 and minister of state 1990-92). Burns indicated he would have been more than willing to be secretary of state but was instead appointed as a junior trade minister by Liz Truss in September 2022, before being sacked—wrongly and precipitately— the following month after accusations of sexual misconduct of which he was later cleared.

If by some chance the government was re-elected, the identity of the next Northern Ireland secretary would be almost anyone’s guess. Burns, who is only 51 and would revel in the job, would be an eminently sensible choice (which may therefore rule him out straight away). Sir Robert Buckland is currently chair of the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and has served in cabinet as lord chancellor from 2019 to 2021 then briefly secretary of state for Wales in 2022. Simon Hoare, a junior minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, chaired the select committee from 2019 to 2023. Dr Andrew Murrison also chaired the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, from 2017 to 2019, and has held several ministerial positions including minister of state for Northern Ireland (2014-15).

Obviously the more likely outcome is a Labour government. The shadow secretary of state since September last year has been Hilary Benn, the veteran Labour MP who was elected for Leeds Central in 1999. He is enormously experienced, one of the few members of the shadow cabinet who has not only held ministerial office but has sat in cabinet as international development secretary (2003-07) and environment, food and rural affairs secretary (2007-10). In addition, he was in the shadow cabinet from 2010 to 2016, lastly as shadow foreign secretary, then chaired the House of Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union from 2016 to 2021.

Although Benn will celebrate his 71st birthday this autumn, he seem to be looking forward to resuming ministerial office and has given no sign that he is merely a dignified placeholder on Starmer’s front bench. He is well versed in the technicalities of the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Irish Sea border thanks to his committee role during the Brexit negotiations, and in September 2022 published a report entitled How to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol with the Centre for European Reform.

In his speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last year, he committed to negotiating a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the European Union, under which the United Kingdom would be aligned to EU single market rules on food and agricultural products, plant and animal health. Such goods would therefore not require border checks between the UK and the EU as they would be assumed to adhere to the same standards. He also pledged to repeal and replace the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which discontinues investigations into historic offences committed during the Troubles and prevents new civil cases from being lodged. However, Benn has indicated that he would like to retain in some form the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, a body chaired by former lord chief justice of Northern Ireland Sir Declan Morgan, in an attempt to provide some measure of satisfaction for victims and families.

In general terms, Benn has said that he would be guided by the principles enshrined in the 2014 Stormont House Agreement because of its “fairly broad level of support”. He has emphasised the importance of political stability in Northern Ireland and praised the restoration of the executive as “the bedrock on which economic success and growth is going to be built”. He has also talked down the possibility of a vote on a united Ireland: he underlined that the Belfast Agreement placed the decision on holding a border poll in the hands of the secretary of state, based on a judgement of the strength of opinion in Northern Ireland:

As Keir Starmer said it’s not even on the horizon at the moment because in so far as there are indications of what public opinion is in Northern Ireland there is no evidence at all that there would be a majority. So that is for the future. But it is a political judgement.

When asked, for clarification, if he considered himself a unionist, Benn responded with a degree of evasion, “Well I am not advocating for a united Ireland. The Labour Party is not advocating for a united Ireland.”

Benn has also made clear that he regards better relations between the UK government and its counterpart in the Republic of Ireland as a central part of a successful strategy for Northern Ireland.

When I was in Dublin recently I said that one thing a Labour government, if we were to be elected, would be committed to is to building and strengthening the relationship with Dublin.

However, in that regard, a new Labour government will be at the mercy of events in Dublin.

Events in the Republic

It has been a turbulent year for politics in the Republic of Ireland. In March, two referendums were held on proposed amendments to the constitution, to expand the definition of family to include durable relationships outside marriage, and to replace a reference to women’s “life within the home” and a constitutional obligation to “endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home” with a gender-neutral article on supporting care within the family. Almost all of the political parties represented in the Dáil and most institutions of civil society campaigned for a vote in favour of the amendments, but, to widespread surprise, both were emphatically rejected. The amendment on the family was defeated by 67.7 per cent to 32.3 per cent, while the amendment on care was beaten by 73.9 per cent to 26.1 per cent.

Less that a fortnight after the referendums, the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, announced that he was resigning for “personal and political reasons”, saying that he was no longer “the best person for the job”. He had been in post since December 2022, and had previously been head of government from 2017 to 2020, as well as serving as tánaiste in the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil/Green Party coalition from 2020 to 2022. Given he is only 45 years old, Varadkar’s sudden departure was a surprise. He was succeeded without a contest as Fine Gael leader by the minister for further and higher education, Simon Harris, who is only 37. There was a limited reshuffle of the cabinet, but crucially for UK/Ireland relations, Michéal Martin remained tánaiste, minister for foreign affairs and minister for defence.

The important context is that Ireland must hold a general election no later than 22 March 2025. Several opposition parties called for an immediate election when Varadkar announced his resignation, but many suspect that the government will choose to hold the poll in the autumn rather than wait until the last possible moment next spring. Earlier this year, Pat Leahy, political editor of The Irish Times, suggested that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party would prefer to complete teh full five-year term but that Fine Gael is minded to go for an early election.

The opinion polls have shown that Sinn Féin has enjoyed a significant lead over the other parties since the middle of 2021. A survey last week recorded Sinn Féin on 27 per cent, Fine Gael on 19 per cent, Fianna Fáil on 16 per cent, the Social Democrats on six per cent and the Green Party on five per cent. But “others/independents” scored a significant 18 per cent, and this is connected to the relatively sudden political crisis over immigration. More than a fifth of the population of the Republic of Ireland are now immigrants, and the subject burst on to the political agenda late last year. Recent polls have suggested that three-quarters of voters think Ireland has allowed too many refugees in, and 28 per cent would consider supporting a political party with “strong anti-immigration views”.

The sudden importance of immigration has caught all of the main parties off-guard. Obvious public unrest, added to the consistent poll lead for Sinn Féin, which has not been in government in Dublin since 1923, has created a political climate of uncertainty and anxiety. The parties will do battle in the European Parliament elections on 6-9 June, which may give a better idea of their respective strengths and how they are dealing with the immigration issue. In the meantime, it means that a new UK government will have to take this context into consideration and understand that any relationship with the government in Dublin will be affected by the lens of domestic Irish politics.

Conclusion

The likely winners in July’s general election must be Sinn Féin. They are likely to maintain their tally of seven seats at worst, and Colum Eastwood of the SDLP is warning that it will be “tough” to hold his Foyle seat (although his majority in 2019 was an enormous 17,110). For the DUP, Gavin Robinson could easily lose Belfast East, and the combination of the circumstances of Donaldson’s departure and a generally buoyant Alliance Party could tip the balance in Lagan Valley. It would not be surprising to see a final tally something like this:

Sinn Féin 8
DUP 6
Alliance 3
SDLP 1

That would be a hugely significant result: it would mean there was a clear majority of nationalist Members of Parliament (even if the Sinn Féin MPs don’t take their seats), and it would renew focus on the Alliance Party’s attitude towards the Union, which is essentially one of neutrality. If the party becomes more influential at Westminster as well as at Stormont, that may not be sustainable in the long term.

If there is a Labour government, the major question will be the Irish sea border, the Windsor Framework and a potential new arrangement with the EU. Starmer will want a more positive tone to relations with the EU, and the operation of the single market in Northern Ireland will be part of a broader picture of trade and customs. Labour may enjoy an initial honeymoon of goodwill and sheer novelty, and that may pay some dividends. In the end, however, there are some near-intractable questions. A hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is deemed politically unacceptable (though it is not, as some people claim, explicitly enshrined in the Belfast Agreement); the European Union will not allow Northern Ireland to be part of the European single market unless it is, in some way, within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice; and it is unavoidably true that with Northern Ireland within the single market and subject to the ECJ but Great Britain outside the single market, there is a border of some kind between two different parts of the United Kingdom. These are not facts which can be logically reconciled by clever legal draughtsmanship or political prestidigitation. Either all parties agree to compromise on some issues of principle, or there is no lasting, universal agreement. But that has always been the nature of Northern Ireland politics.