This election could see multiple seats in NI change hands – but every party here has damaged itself

With no election now until 2027, what lies ahead is a chance of stability for the fledging Executive – but there’s no guarantee of it

THIS has been a remarkable election campaign in which every major Northern Ireland party has faced major problems, with no clear winner based on the last five weeks.

A week from now, we will know the results. This election is more consequential than most; there is the expectation not just of a change of government but a Labour landslide of potentially historic proportions.

Locally, there is the potential for a series of significant outcomes — from the leaders of the DUP and SDLP losing their seats, to the chance for Sinn Fein to bounce back quickly from its southern nightmare three weeks ago.

The campaign has not led to open strains in the fledgling Stormont Executive, but there are hints that deep disagreements are being hidden until after polling day.

One of the few things on which the parties all seemed to agree was the need to urgently tackle the pollution of Lough Neagh. This isn’t a tribal issue, and has widespread public support, so ought to be one of the easier issues facing the

Executive. Yet yesterday the News Letter reported that the DUP has objected to key parts of a plan drawn up by Alliance Environment Minister Andrew Muir which would have restricted fertiliser use, which is the single biggest contributor to the lough’s ecological collapse.

Thursday’s Executive meeting was cancelled, with no clarity on when the issue will be considered — despite the deadly cyanobacteria reappearing in massive blooms across the lough over recent days.

The DUP wouldn’t say why it opposed Mr Muir’s plan and Sinn Fein wouldn’t say if it will support the proposals.

This is real politics: the use of power to change society, and in this case alter the landscape. Arguing about Gaza or about national taxation is easier for many Executive parties than debating that for which they’re wholly responsible.

I cannot recall an election campaign in which so many parties have faced such significant problems of their own making.

The DUP began the campaign by retreating from its claim that the Irish Sea border has gone. This new stance was an acceptance of reality; it was, as this newspaper and others always made clear, obvious that it had not swept away the trade restrictions or EU law.

But as the campaign went on, the party’s position became hopelessly contorted to the extent that I now am thoroughly unclear as to what it believes.

Last week South Antrim candidate Paul Girvan told Good Morning Ulster clearly: “I do believe that it [the party]s deal] was over-sold.”

It was put to him that the previous night Gavin Robinson had in the UTV debate denied the deal was over-sold. Girvan repeated what he’d said, saying: “I stand by that.”

Robinson himself has sounded slippery on the issue, squandering the chance as a new leader to get credit for being straight with the public.

On BBC Talkback, he denied that the party bears any responsibility for the post-brexit mess, claiming that “we haven’t taken our eye off the ball”. He derisively dismissed the suggestion they’d backed the wrong horse in Boris Johnson, saying: “We didn’t back Boris Johnson.”

Even voters with a limited grasp of politics will have raised their eyebrows at such a claim.

The party brought Johnson to its conference and screamed their adulation for him at a point where he was agitating against Theresa May. After May’s fall, Arlene Foster gave a coded endorsement of Johnson for the Tory leadership, saying it was “very important that we leave on the 31st of October”, something only Johnson was promising.

It was as if the DUP was unaware of what was known to almost everyone else in the UK. As far back as 2011, Johnson’s former editor at The Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings, wrote:

“Most politicians are ambitious and ruthless, but Boris is a gold medal egomaniac. I would not trust him with my wife nor — from painful experience — my wallet.”

Sinn Fein’s campaign has had the appearance of an underdog defending a 1-0 lead rather than the largest and wealthiest party on the island preparing to make what Mary Lou Mcdonald claims are “nailed on gains”.

For much of the campaign Sinn Fein has hidden away Michelle O’neill. She didn’t do either of the TV debates. She didn’t do the Talkback leaders’ interview. She didn’t do any indepth interviews with newspapers. And there was intense speculation, both inside and outside the BBC, that Ms O’neill would duck out of facing the notoriously combative Mark Carruthers in The View’s series

‘The campaign has not led to open strains in the Executive but there are hints that disagreements are being hidden until after election’

of leaders’ debates. In the end, perhaps because there was such focus on it, she did that — and arguably performed better than any of the other leaders.

So why not utilise such an asset more?

It appears that either Ms O’neill herself, or others in Sinn Fein, are worried she could lose them votes; there’s no other explanation for not deploying the First Minister in such circumstances.

The situation is reminiscent of SDLP leader Alasdair Mcdonnell not showing up for both TV debates in 2015, and also pulling out of a series of hustings events. It doesn’t suggest confidence.

Ms O’neill also didn’t attend her party’s manifesto launch, with the party saying that she was sick.

The document launched that day contained commitments which were shorter than this column. Indeed, the Catholic bishops in Northern Ireland put out an election statement which was twice the length of Sinn Fein’s manifesto.

All of this follows the party’s deep disappointment at its performance in the Republic’s local and European elections. For a party whose narrative has been one of relentless progress towards what it believes is the inevitability of a united Ireland, such setbacks are problematic.

The SNP has shown the risk of entrusting almost all of the independence movement to one party; if the party goes down, so does the cause it exists to espouse.

Alliance generally performs strongly in a campaign, but has faced a series of problems. Its deputy leader, Stephen Farry, is facing a twin-pronged attempt to unseat him in North Down, in what one experienced politician from the constituency described as the dirtiest campaign they’d seen.

The intensity of that contest has meant that Alliance has had to devote significant resources to defending the seat, even though it has two other major targets in East Belfast and Lagan Valley.

Leader Naomi Long’s campaign has been undermined by her repeated refusal to accept that she made a major blunder by bringing in a law which made it a criminal offence to say “Jimmy Savile was a paedophile”.

The law, which restricted the freedom of the press and threatened victims of sexual abuse with up to six months in jail if they identified their attacker, was struck down by the High Court at the start of the campaign after a challenge by this newspaper and other media organisations.

Mrs Long has refused to say if she will use public money to appeal that judgment and has steadfastly made clear she doesn’t think she did anything wrong. It’s unusual for Mrs

Long to be so firmly on the back foot for so long on a topic — but that’s only one of her problems in this campaign. The other self-inflicted wound was her decision to pull out of the Ireland’s Future rally a fortnight ago.

Mrs Long had agreed to be there months ago and while she insisted her U-turn was because of the campaign, plenty of people — both nationalist and unionist — saw it as a tactical attempt to avoid being associated with an Irish unity event just weeks before she attempts to persuade soft unionists to help her unseat the DUP leader in East Belfast.

When Mrs Long’s pressing engagement for the day turned out to be a tour of Northern Ireland which included a laughing trip on Barry’s ghost train, her reason for avoiding addressing thousands of people in her own constituency appeared particularly limp.

It was another blunder; if she’d gone to the event her presence could scarcely have attracted as many headlines as her absence.

The Ulster Unionists could win two, or even perhaps three, seats in this campaign, yet the party has similarly been under pressure of its own making.

At the outset of the campaign, Robin Swann’s attempt to win the party’s top target seat, South Antrim, was undermined when a prominent local UUP councillor resigned in protest.

Antrim councillor Paul Michael, who has stood for the party for Stormont, was furious at the elevation of Mike Nesbitt to the health ministry despite the Strangford MLA having admitted breaking Covid rules during lockdown.

In another of the party’s target seats, North Down, candidate Tim Collins repeatedly strayed from party policy during interviews. If the former SAS officer wins the seat, or even comes within a whisker of doing so, that might look like the sort of maverick behaviour the party needs to shake up its staid image, but it raised questions about what party policy is and whether its candidates actually believe in it.

The TUV faced the most bizarre self-inflicted damage of the campaign when Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — whose party is in an alliance with the TUV — came out to give his personal endorsement to the DUP’S Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley Jr, with Reform’s deputy leader describing them as “old beer buddies”.

Mr Paisley is standing against TUV leader Jim Allister in North Antrim, meaning that Reform as a party is backing Mr Allister but Reform’s leader is backing Mr Paisley.

The move infuriated the TUV, and some in Reform, leading to a statement that the party still supported TUV, but the damage was done.

The party which has had the most straightforward campaign has been the SDLP.

A row over the choice of

Lilian Seenoi-barr as Mayor of Derry City and Strabane saw two SDLP councillors resign in protest.

It was an embarrassing blunder in what is likely to be the party’s most vulnerable seat, Foyle, even though leader Colum Eastwood’s 17,000 majority ought to be enough to see off Sinn Féin’s challenge.

This should be the last election in Northern Ireland until the next Assembly election in 2027. That should give added certainty to Stormont, and perhaps even mean the parties will take long-delayed difficult decisions in the hope that voters have forgotten by the time of the next election.

And yet there were two and a half years without an election between 2019 and 2022, but that period saw Stormont collapse. What lies ahead is a chance of stability, but no guarantee of it.

‘NI Catholic bishops put out an election statement which was twice the length of SF’S manifesto’