As Britain turned away from EU, Northern Ireland turned to Sinn Fein

Six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, no part of the United Kingdom has felt the sting in the tail more than Northern Ireland, where Brexit laid the groundwork for Sinn Fein’s remarkable rise in legislative elections this past week.
With almost all of the votes counted Saturday, Sinn Fein, the main Irish national party, declared victory, racking up 27 of the 90 seats available in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the most of any party in the territory. The Democratic Union Party, which represents those who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, slipped to second place, with 24 seats.
“Today ushers in a new era which I believe presents us all with an opportunity to re-imagine relationships in this society on the basis of fairness, on the basis of equality and on the basis of social justice,” said Michelle O’Neill, the party’s leader who is set to become the region’s first miner.
Election staff begin counting of votes in Belfast in the Northern Ireland Assembly election. (Photo: AP)
Although Brexit was not on the ballot, it cast a long shadow over the campaign, particularly for the DUP, the flagship union party that has been at the helm of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government since it was created the Good Friday peace agreement nearly a quarter-century ago.
Brexit’s legacy rippled through local elections across the British Isles: In London, where anti-Brexit voters turned Conservative Party bastions over to the Labour Party, and in the “red wall,” England’s pro-Brexit rust belt regions, where the Conservatives held off Labour. But in Northern Ireland, Brexit’s effect was decisive.
For all of the hory of Sinn Fein’s victory — the first for a party that calls for a united Ireland and has vestigial ties to the Irish Republican Army — the election results are less a breakthrough for Irish nationalism than a marker of the demoralization of union voters, the disarray of their leaders, and an electorate that put more of a priority on economic issues than sectarian struggles.
Much of that can be traced to Brexit.
“Coming to terms with the loss of supremacy is an awful lot for unionism to process,” said Diarmaid Ferriter, a professor of modern Irish hory at University College Dublin. “But the unions really managed to shoot themselves in the foot.”
The DUP struggled to hold together voters who are divided and angry over the North’s altered status — it is the only member of the United Kingdom that shares a border with the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU.
That hybrid status has complicated life in many ways, most notably in necessitating a complex trading arrangement, the Northern Ireland Protocol, which imposes border checks on goods flowing to Northern Ireland from mainland Britain. Many unions complain that it has driven a wedge between them and the rest of the United Kingdom effectively creating a border in the Irish Sea.
People leave a polling station in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Thursday. (Photo: AP)
The DUP endorsed the protocol, only to turn against it later and pull out of the last Northern Ireland government in protest. Union voters punished it for that U-turn, with some voting for a more hard-line union party and others turning to a nonsectarian centr party, the Alliance, which also scored major gains.
As the runner-up, the DUP is entitled to name a deputy first miner, who functions as a de facto equal. Even so, it has not committed to taking part in a government with a Sinn Fein first miner. And it has threatened to boycott until the protocol is scrapped, a position that draws scant support beyond its hard-core base.
“There’s fragmentation within parties that are trying to reflect a more secular Northern Ireland,” said Katy Hayward, a professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast. “That fits uncomfortably with the architects of the peace agreement. There’s no dominant group now. We’re all minorities.”
In this more complex landscape, Hayward said, Sinn Fein was likely to govern much as it campaigned, focusing on competent management and sound policies rather than mobilizing an urgent campaign for Irish unity.
O’Neill, the Sinn Fein leader in Northern Ireland, hailed what she called “the election of a generation.” But she said little about Irish unity. Sinn Fein’s overall leader, Mary Lou McDonald, said this past week that she could foresee a referendum on Irish unification within a decade, and possibly “within a five-year time frame.”
For the unions, the path out of the wilderness is harder to chart. Hayward said the DUP faced a difficult choice in whether to take part in the next government.
If it refuses, it would be violating the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement. It would also risk further alienating voters, particularly “soft unions,” who have little patience for continued paralysis in the government.
Election staff count votes in in Belfast. (Photo: AP)
But if it joins the next government, that brings its own perils. The DUP swung to the right during the campaign to fend off a challenge from the more hard-line Traditional Union Voice party. It has made its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol an article of faith.
“There may be serious talks now about union unity, but there will be no government unless the protocol goes,” said David Campbell, chair of the Loyal Communities Council, which represents a group of pro-union paramilitary groups that vehemently oppose the protocol.
That puts the DUP’s future out of its hands, since the decision to overhaul the protocol lies with the British government. Prime Miner Boris Johnson has signaled that he is open to doing that — especially if it would facilitate a new Northern Ireland government — but he must weigh other considerations.
Overturning the protocol would raise tensions with the EU and even risk igniting a trade war, a stark prospect at a time when Britain already faces soaring inflation and warnings that its economy might fall into recession later this year.
It would also antagonize the United States, which has warned Johnson not to do anything that would jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement.
“The Biden adminration has made it very clear that the protocol is not a threat to the Good Friday Agreement,” said Bob McDonagh, a former Irish ambassador to Britain. “It actually helps support the Good Friday Agreement. That will act as a sort of constraint on Johnson.”