High unionist turnout is key if UUP is to win in Fermanagh & S. Tyrone

Recently the Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone Michelle Gildernew said that some pro-Remain unionist farmers will vote for her.
News Letter editorialNews Letter editorial
News Letter editorial

It is possible that there are some such voters, but they are likely to be very small in number.

Tom Elliott, the Ulster Unionist contender for the Westminster seat that he narrowly won in 2015 and then narrowly lost in 2017, has gently contradicted that suggestion.

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Many farmers are pro staying in the EU but Mr Elliott thinks that more of them are Leave voters.

On top of that, he says, unionists are united against Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, which creates a border in the Irish Sea.

There are unlikely to be more than a handful of unionists anywhere in Northern Ireland who would consider voting for Sinn Fein in any circumstances, even if they are bitterly opposed to Brexit.

It is not as if republicans are showing any contrition over the IRA’s past violence, the impact of which is so ingrained in unionists, from the most moderate to the most hardline.

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There is in fact a long moderate unionist tradition in Fermanagh, which is the most westerly part of the United Kingdom.

It is all the more remarkable given that more than 100 of the 115 or so people who died in the Troubles in the county did so at the hands of republican terrorists.

Mr Elliott certainly has a chance of victory. The Ulster Unionists came within 43 votes of winning the seat back in 2001, and have polled closely in numbers to Sinn Fein in all contests since then.

There is a clear nationalist majority in the constituency, and there has been for decades, yet for all the talk of demographic change, and despite the terrorist onslaught, the ratio of nationalist to unionist has changed little over the last 40 years.

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Fermanagh and South Tyrone is one of two seats where unionists are not fighting each other, in a bid to keep out SF, the other being North Belfast. They can certainly win in both but only if unionist turnout is high.