ANALYSIS: Robinson and McGuinness won by selling can-do politics – there are big economic challenges ahead and a budget to be carried out
FROM THE eminence of the hill at Stormont Peter Robinson is master of all he surveys after these Assembly elections. Martin McGuinness stands beside him observing his strengthened phalanx of Assembly troops. David Ford of Alliance close by might take an additional share of the spoils.
Ulster Unionist and SDLP leaders Tom Elliott and Margaret Ritchie retreat from the battlefield weakened and wounded, wondering is the future of their parties one of progressive irrelevance, and probably also apprehensive about their own positions.
The DUP came into this election with 36 seats and would have been satisfied to take anything between 33 and 36. They got 38 seats with 198,428 votes, just marginally down on the 30.1 per cent vote won in 2007.
Sinn Féin won 29 seats, gaining an extra seat, with 20,000 fewer votes than the DUP. Its percentage of the vote increased from 26.2 per cent four years ago to 26.9 per cent.
The UUP slumped from 18 to 16, the SDLP from 16 to 14, even though the SDLP on 94,286 votes won almost 6,800 more votes than the UUP. Alliance increased its representation from seven to eight seats and depending on what independent unionist David McClarty does, it could actually have more Executive ministers than either the UUP or the SDLP.
What the DUP leader, in particular, has achieved was unimaginable 12 months ago.
Peter Robinson is 62 now and whether he sees out the full four years of this fourth Assembly since the Belfast Agreement of 1998 is for him to decide. But he is back in control again.
After Irisgate and the subsequent humiliation of losing his Westminster seat in May 2010 this election was a redemptive moment. He sounds like a changed man. There was no gloating. His voice is softer.
Why did it turn out like this? The simple answer is that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister are head and shoulders above their main rivals in terms of the issues that matter in politics: strategic thinking, party organisation and the ability to read the public’s mood.
They sold a positive message from the outset while the UUP and SDLP, seeking to carve out a political distinction, carped and whinged and failed to celebrate what was achieved after all the bad years, after all the bad decades. They tried to be both inside and outside the Northern Executive and it didn’t work.
Robinson and McGuinness are a resolute duo. They will meet tomorrow and a decision will be taken on whether to hold an Assembly meeting on Thursday to elect the next Executive, or to leave that to early next week. There is a budget to be implemented and serious economic challenges to be confronted.
The policy should be to just get stuck in. They won by selling can-do affirmative politics and that should be their focus. Unusually for Northern Ireland there are no elections for at least three years (presuming David Cameron and Nick Clegg can keep it together), so they have time and space to address issues such as creating jobs and making the North a less sectarian place. They needn’t be over-burdened by Orange/Green issues.
They have invited the UUP, the SDLP and Alliance to be part of that work. David Ford is certainly up for it and it is now down to Margaret Ritchie and Tom Elliott as to whether they will be in government or opposition.
Tom Elliott harmed himself and his party by his reference to the Tricolour as the flag of a “foreign nation” and his description of Sinn Féin supporters as “scum”. Most everyone, including Sinn Féin leaders, offered him a heat-of- battle fool’s pardon, but he didn’t want it. He repeatedly defended his comments, and that was sad.
The UUP is predominantly a middle-of-the-road unionist party but Mr Elliott seems to want to place it to the right of the Traditional Unionist Voice. The joke in Northern Ireland yesterday was that “Tom Elliott makes Jim Allister sound like the Dalai Lama”. If he keeps that up he will shed more votes to Alliance and the DUP.
What he said may have implications for whether the UUP has one or two ministries. Under the present figures, and excluding the First Minister and Deputy First Minister posts, the DUP would have four ministries, Sinn Féin three, and the UUP, SDLP and Alliance one each. And that doesn’t include the justice post that Alliance leader David Ford already holds.
David McClarty, former UUP stalwart who was deselected by his local party, won a seat in East Derry as an independent. Were he to rejoin the UUP it would be entitled to two ministries, and Alliance would lose out.
Mr McClarty was enjoying his moment yesterday. Let Tom and the UUP sweat, was his attitude, and who would begrudge him that emotion after the way he was treated. He didn’t rule out a reconciliation. But Mr McClarty is also on the progressive wing of the party and Mr Elliott’s gauche comments won’t have made a rapprochement any easier.
Margaret Ritchie needed to be lucky. She wasn’t. Going into the election the party had real opportunities of gains in West Tyrone, Strangford and East Antrim, and also needed to hold on to its single seats in North Antrim, South Antrim and Fermanagh-South Tyrone. It failed in all but one of these – West Tyrone where Joe Byrne regained his seat lost the last time – and that’s the party’s fault.
One disenchanted insider took the trouble to text a reminder of a comment he made at the SDLP annual conference in February last year when Margaret Ritchie defeated Dr Alasdair McDonnell for the leadership. Her election was “a suicide note for the SDLP”, the insider said at the time, and now, he feared, the Assembly results just reinforced that point.
He didn’t foresee an immediate leadership challenge because there was a “shallow pool” of potential contenders, but was certain Ms Ritchie would not be leader come the next Assembly elections in four years’ time.
Party deputy leader Patsy McGlone, who was safely returned in Mid-Ulster, was more considered. He adverted to the problem that has always afflicted the party: lack of organisation and commitment on the canvas. An organiser supreme, he noted correctly: “Where we did not have the organisation we simply did not deliver. We have to reorganise and clarify our message.”
The party at all levels knows it has an organisational problem, but the trouble is that there just doesn’t seem to be anybody with the skill and drive to fix that failing.
The Executive now has four years to get things done. If the SDLP and UUP properly join the enterprise it will be a government without an opposition, apart from TUV leader Jim Allister who was elected in North Antrim. He’s not the most cheerful of politicians but at least he will strive to stop the consensus being too cosy.
He won’t worry Robinson and McGuinness and neither will Tom Elliott, Margaret Ritchie or David Ford.
They’re in control.
