Elections in Northern Ireland aren’t uncommon – even referenda such as on AV – but by all the standards of recent history last week’s assembly poll offered none of the historic significance than many had previously held. The DUP’s Ian Paisley junior (in the first major election in which his father has been entirely absent) even told a BBC radio presenter that it had been ‘boring’.
In the end the results proved rather predictable and familiar. Most of the candidates who stood for re-election were returned. Peter Robinson cemented his place as first minister as the DUP claimed the largest number of seats (38 out of 108). Sinn Fein’s place as the loudest voice of nationalists was again re-affirmed as they took second place (29 seats). On the both of those margins the moderate parties failed to make gains at the expense of their larger rivals while there was no breakthrough for rejectionist unionists or cross-community parties.
Northern Ireland’s Assembly and executive regional government seem to have begun to do the task it was assigned on Good Friday 13 years ago, but it has rarely been a smooth journey: this is the first time the any assembly has completed its entire four-year term. Previously Westminster had been called in by indignant Unionists to suspend the legislature, but not so since 2007, and so a more settled pattern is surely beginning. Not that the current consensus hasn’t been tested – the murder of a young Roman Catholic police officer last month was a reminder, if any were needed, that there are still those who wished the entire peace process and all its gains would go away, and are prepared to take lives to do so.
That latest killing, however, strengthened rather than weakened the consensus between the leaders of the Stormont executive: Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, former deadly enemies, now bound together, it seems, till death or a election failure do them part. Robinson, who’s comeback to the very forefront of political life following last years personal scandal has been remarkable, stood shoulder to shoulder with McGuinness at the funeral mass for the police constable Kerr in Co Tyrone, a sight almost unthinkable even a few years earlier. Several days after the funeral he appeared on a televised debate among party leaders where he looked to show the same solidarity with his deputy. He looked much at ease, charismatic, an Ulster Alex Salmond, a far cry from 12 months previously when he lost his East Belfast seat in the House of Commons to Naomi Long of the Alliance party.
That debate laid clear another aspect of the current situation. Under the Good Friday agreement the executive has to be made up of members from each main party according to their strength in the Assembly, meaning that 104 out of 108 MLAs are represented by their parties in the executive. In the days of the post-ceasefire negotiations the name of the game was inclusion, more parties representing all sides of the divide would be represented at all layers of government – a form of enforced cooperation that would prevent simple majority rule. That was then, but Northern Ireland’s constitutional reconstruction has gone from ‘House divided’ to ‘crowded house’. The government executive has become too unwieldy to – or so the opposition politicians imagine – articulate any coherent plan for government. Most parties have now called for the mandatory coalition system to be scrapped and a voluntary system adopted instead. The question remains: is there enough consensus across the board for this to work and for real if ‘boring’ politics to flourish and real opposition to develop? A lot of the complaints have come from the SDLP and Ulster Unionist parties, formerly bastions of moderate opinion, they have slid down the polls and now find themselves with much-reduced voices in the executive. They have ended up sharing a squeezed middle ground with the cross-community Alliance party and struggling to be heard and seem relevant. In the recession, as with other local issues, the minor parties have been unable to articulate or offer a credible opposition strategy and that was evident throughout the campaign and its resulting votes.
This was laid bare in March when a severe budget was brought forward by DUP finance minister Sammy Wilson and passed by the Assembly with support from Sinn Fein and the DUP but opposition from the SDLP and Ulster Unionists, who, it was claimed, had opposed it as an act of pure political posturing ahead of the election.
Posturing or principle, it seemed to have had little success for the smaller parties as the two parties, Robinson and McGuinness, firmly at their respective helms romped home again. The peace process, like the first minister, has proved robust enough to last a full term. However, the mechanics of government may have passed their use-by date.