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Change afoot in unionist stronghold amid indications of ‘split’ vote

Northern Ireland election: Lagan Valley constituency

Lagan Valley constituency: Rachel Kelly with her son Cillian will be voting Alliance because they have 'a real chance of winning the seat this time around'. Photograph: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker

Seanín Graham's face
Seanín Graham
Fri Jun 28 2024 - 06:00

Pushing her baby’s buggy into a Lisburn leisure centre, Rachel Kelly admits she is planning to vote for a different political party for the first time.

It is a week until polling day in Northern Ireland and Kelly lives in a constituency where former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson served as MP for 27 years.

Lagan Valley, a staunch unionist stronghold, has never in its 40-year history been considered a target seat.

But the bombshell events of Good Friday when Donaldson quit the party over historical sex offence charges coupled with a surge in the middle-ground Alliance Party’s vote in the last Westminster election, have catapulted it into battleground territory.

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Change is afoot.

“I actually come from a nationalist community but for the first time ever, I’m going to be voting Alliance because I think they have a real chance of winning the seat this time around,” says Kelly. “For me, the most important thing is the cost of childcare — it’s more than our mortgage.”

Warming up for a parents and baby circuits class in an enormous sports hall, the first-time mother believes the Donaldson factor could potentially have an impact on the day.

“I think the whole DUP scandal will split the unionist vote,” says Kelly.

Doing sit-ups beside her, Sarah is concerned about that prospect.

She wants a unionist candidate to retain the seat — not because she’s “super-duper pro-union” but because of the “moral issues they stand for”.

“I’m a Christian and me and my husband have talked a lot about this [election] because we haven’t decided who we’re voting for,” she says.

“I think it’s wide open.”

It was in this same hall of the Lagan Valley Leisureplex that Donaldson praised his party for holding up “extremely well” just 13 months ago during a local government election count.

Despite his majority dropping to four figures in the last UK general election five years ago — 6,499 votes separated him and Alliance’s Sorcha Eastwood — there is no disputing the huge personal vote of the former UDR corporal first elected to the seat in 1997 for the Ulster Unionist Party before his defection to the DUP in 2003.

It is also impossible to estimate the fallout of his controversial departure on this constituency, part of which remains deeply conservative despite changing demographics, recent boundary changes and vote swings.

“A 7,000-odd gap is going to be a relatively hard thing to surmount,” says former BBC NI political editor, Mark Devenport.

The DUP saw a 16.4 per cent drop here last time around but Donaldson still won 19,586 votes (43.1 per cent) in what remained a solidly unionist seat.

Parachuted in to replace him as the DUP candidate is Jonathan Buckley, a 32-year-old MLA who comes from neighbouring Upper Bann constituency.

Opposed to the deal struck by Donaldson with the UK government that led to Stormont’s return at the beginning of the year, the party has, according to one unionist observer, “thrown the kitchen sink” at Buckley’s election campaign.

However, it is the popularity of Alliance’s high-profile candidate, Sorcha Eastwood, that is causing the greatest headache for the DUP.

“She’s a phenomenon in terms of canvassing and it’s possible that things might align, but it will be a big ask of her,” says Devenport.

A Lagan Valley MLA who grew up in Lisburn, Eastwood (38) increased her party’s Westminster vote by 17.1 per cent when she ran for the MP seat in December 2019 — just seven months after she was first elected to the local council.

The race has been dubbed a two-horse contest by some pundits but the significance of the Ulster Unionist Party’s (UUP) candidate, Robbie Butler, cannot be underestimated.

A former firefighter, Butler is also local and has a good personal vote; the UUP deputy party leader secured 8,606 votes the last time he ran for the seat, coming in third with 19 per cent of the vote.

One UUP insider said they’re getting a “lot of disaffected DUP voters who are telling us explicitly they are switching to us”.

With the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) fielding a candidate in next week’s election — the party didn’t stand in 2019 — this could also potentially affect the DUP majority, with those unionists opposed to the so-called Donaldson Deal and Irish Sea Border opting for the TUV’s Lorna Smyth.

Sinn Féin is not running anyone this time, a move that could encourage tactical voting for Alliance.

Yet, for all the political and social change in Lagan Valley, the DUP candidate remains the favourite in this unionist heartland.

Circuits training instructor Ian Murray is among the undecided voters who could alter the outcome: “If they make a better life for me and my kids, I’d vote for them, I don’t care who they are.”

Ian Murray in the Lagan Valley Leisureplex describes himself as undecided. Photograph: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker

CANDIDATES:

Jonathan Buckley — DUP

Robbie Butler — UUP

Patricia Denvir — Greens

Sorcha Eastwood — Alliance

Simon Lee — SDLP

Lorna Smyth — TUV

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