Editorial: Alliance says it decides issues on merit weighed against its principles and policies - if so then it is fair to note that those principles lead to it voting mostly with Sinn Fein at Stormont

​Alliance votes more often with Sinn Fein at Stormont even than the nationalist SDLP, new data shows.

​On Saturday we reported figures from a website, StormontWatch.com, that presents Northern Ireland Assembly voting patterns (click here for the story).

The results were telling. Of 249 Stormont votes since May 2022 on bills, amendments, and motions, Alliance voted with Sinn Fein 181 (or 73%) times, while the SDLP did so 171 times (69%). In that period, Alliance voted with the DUP 56 times (23%).

The Ulster Unionist deputy leader Diana Armstrong MLA said: “This confirms what many of us suspected.”

It certainly is. At its most public, Alliance stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Sinn Fein on the Irish Sea border, including joint visits to Dublin, calling for the “full implementation” of that frontier. It stands with Sinn Fein in adopting ‘woke’ politics (ie the most radical stance on matters such as trans). And it has helped republicans on the Irish language, for example supporting its extremist Belfast sign policy.

Alliance however is thin-skinned when tackled on these things. Michael Long, its group leader in Belfast wrote to this newspaper in November (click here for his letter) saying “Alliance has always voted not to support” dual-language street signage where most residents do not want them. How ridiculous in that case to back a Sinn Fein policy where 15% support in a street is enough to get Gaelic signs. The policy is panning out in the sectarian way republicans intended.

As well as thin-skinned, the party is high-minded. In our Saturday story it said: “Others may be obsessed with viewing everything through orange and green goggles, and looking at how others vote, but that’s not how we do politics.”

It says it weighs the merits of an issue against its principles and policies. Fine. But then we can observe that those principles chime with Sinn Fein more than even those of the SDLP do.