Sinn Féin scores record win in Northern Ireland as voters rage over DUP’s siege of Stormont – POLITICO

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Dublin – Sinn Féin has risen to new electoral heights in Northern Ireland. They can thank the destructive antics of their archenemy, the Democratic Unionist Party, for making it possible.

The Irish Republicans were tipped to come out strong in last Thursday’s Northern Ireland Assembly election, edging out Geoffrey Donaldson’s Democratic Unionist Party along the way. But even Sinn Féin’s wildest hopes were dashed with the weekend’s results built on a crescendo over the two-day marathon count.

When the final results were announced at Belfast City Hall after midnight on Saturday, Sinn Féin had won 144 seats, a 39-seat gain that doubled expectations. Her share of 30.9 per cent of the vote was a historic high, two points better than last year’s poll-leading Northern Ireland Assembly election – a performance that should have propelled the party’s regional leader, Michelle O’Neill, into the prime minister’s job. First time.

But O’Neill was denied the chance to lead an executive through the community, as the Good Friday Peace Agreement intended, because the Democratic Unionists – who used to finish first – had spent the past year blocking the formation of any government in Stormont. Current power-sharing rules require both Sinn Féin and the DUP to participate.

According to analysts and other party leaders, the DUP’s obstructionist tactics may have spurred support with die-hard unionists—but also led to waves of new support for their traditional enemies from voters tired of the impasse.

“Geoffrey Donaldson has become the greatest possible recruitment censor for the Republicans. The longer Michelle O’Neill is prevented from becoming first minister,” Susan Breen, political editor of the Belfast Telegraph wrote, “the more voters will be driven into the arms of her party.”

SPD and Labor leader Colum Eastwood, who is competing with Sinn Féin in Irish nationalist areas, said his moderate party’s grassroots had turned to Sinn Féin in unprecedented numbers because the DUP had run out of patience.

“They are very upset that Michelle O’Neill has not been able to become first minister,” said Eastwood, whose party — one of the architects of the Good Friday achievement a quarter of a century ago — suffered heavy losses amid the Sinn Féin-DUP standoff.

“They want the politicians back in the business and dealing with the issues that are troubling our society,” Eastwood said. “Now it’s up to the DUP to carry on with that.”

I’m still waiting

When or whether the DUP actually does so remains far from certain, given that its vote did well in Thursday’s election.

Donaldson and other leading DUP figures have spent the past three months looking for loopholes in the British government’s Windsor Framework, the post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland designed to reduce – not eliminate – the checks the EU imposes on goods from the rest of the country. Countries. United kingdom. Unionists argue that such controls effectively place Northern Ireland outside the UK, and on a slippery slope towards a united Ireland, which is Sinn Féin’s ultimate goal.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had hoped that the Windsor framework settlement package would convince the FDW to resume co-operation in Stormont while strengthening Sinn Féin.

According to analysts, the DUP’s obstructionist tactics in Westminster may have spurred support with die-hard Unionists at the polling stations | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

But Donaldson told reporters at Belfast City Hall that his party’s resilient performance — it won 122 of 462 seats in 11 Northern Ireland assemblies, exactly the same total as in the 2019 election — showed that most unionists would rather not have Stormont than accept “barriers.” Before “Trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain”.

“The DUP have polled aggressively despite everything that’s been thrown at us,” said Donaldson, who now wants Westminster to pass unspecified legislation strengthening Northern Ireland’s constitutional ties to Britain. “The UK government must act to ensure that our place in the UK is not only respected, but protected by law. The mandate we have been given reinforces that message.”

His immediate predecessor as DUP leader Edwin Potts said that while others expected the party to end its subversion of Stormont now that the election was out of the way, such a move remains unlikely unless the British government finds additional support for Stormont’s ailing finances.

“We’re ready to come back but we need to get more than what’s on the table,” Potts said. If we go back to the Assembly and the Executive in the morning with this budget, the first task of each minister will be to implement the cuts. It is essential that we get a package to ensure that this does not happen.”

O’Neill, who spent much of the weekend engaging in euphoric scenes with Sinn Féin activists, expressed exasperation that the DUP might tie others indefinitely for months longer.

“I don’t accept fall as the time frame for CEO recovery, as many people are suggesting. There shouldn’t be any more delays. Let’s do it Monday morning,” she said.

Joining O’Neill in Belfast is Sinn Féin’s Commander-in-Chief, Mary Lou MacDonald, who is from Dublin and still has her eye on an even bigger prize: leading a government in the neighboring Republic of Ireland for the first time.

Sinn Féin, the only party to contest elections in both parts of Ireland, wants as part of its strategy for Irish unity to gain power in both jurisdictions simultaneously. For decades a fanciful dream – and unitary nightmare – this scenario has become a possibility.

The party’s growth to become the top party in Northern Ireland was matched south of the border by MacDonald’s successful efforts to build Sinn Féin into the dominant opposition party in the Dáil Éireann, the Irish Parliament. She has topped every poll for years and looks likely to win the next general election, which should happen by 2025 but could come sooner.

As MacDonald and O’Neill together climbed the steps of Belfast City Council, Sinn Féin activists welcomed their party’s growing expectations of gaining power in both the Dáil and Stormont, with MacDonald as prime minister in Dublin and O’Neill as first minister in Belfast – should the DUP back down.

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