Owen Polley: Startlingly poor poll results for unionism call for a rethink

​It may have been a local government poll, electing councillors to deal with a limited slate of issues, but the parties tried hard to turn it into a mini-referendum on Stormont and the Northern Ireland Protocol.

As I pointed out last week, the electorate is perfectly capable of untangling the responsibilities of different layers of government and voting accordingly. Realistically, though, the result will be interpreted in a way that grants it greater significance, and it was not a cheering outcome for the pro-Union parties, whichever way you look at it.

That is not, in a sense, terribly surprising. It has been difficult for unionists to deliver a hopeful, compelling message over the years since Brexit, because they’ve been forced to respond defensively to the challenges presented by the ‘backstop’ and then the protocol. Their own supporters are still divided over the EU referendum and it is difficult to explain, in simple language, how trade arrangements can profoundly affect our constitutional position.

Then, just before this election, the secretary of state delivered what most observers deemed to be a punitive budget for Northern Ireland. It seemed calculated to pressure the DUP back into power-sharing and mobilise the electorate against the prospect of impending cuts, though it also highlighted the ways in which the executive mismanaged our finances for decades.

In their election pitch, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and his candidates asked voters to ignore the received wisdom of most politicians and the media, in order to support their boycott of the institutions and send an anti-protocol, anti-framework message to Westminster. While the TUV’s pitch was similar, Jim Allister claimed his party was a more reliable, consistent voice, with a less muddled message, whose success could prevent the DUP from compromising on Stormont.

The UUP, in contrast, saw problems but also ‘opportunities’ in Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework. And its leader, Doug Beattie, was an outspoken critic of the DUP’s decision to prevent power-sharing.

His message was intended to appeal to unionists who were fed up with Stormont being disrupted. And it implied that the protocol question was either settled for now or less important to the future of the Union than running Northern Ireland properly.

The nationalist results at this election were depressing enough, but relatively simple to interpret. Constitutional nationalism continues to be cannibalised by the cult of Sinn Fein.

Voters responded to the party’s appeal to turn the poll into a plebiscite on Michelle O’Neill becoming first minister. The IRA’s campaign has been successfully sanitised and glorified, to the point that voters either accept the lie that its campaign of murder was justified, or feel more motivated by republican grievance-mongering than the plight of victims. Much of its support is now drawn from a younger generation that doesn’t remember the Troubles and seems to have little appreciation of the degree to which a vote for that party is hurtful to their neighbours, or feels enough bitterness and hatred that it doesn’t matter.

The party’s continued success should be the single biggest warning to the kind of people who claim that, after Brexit, they are open to the prospect of an all-Ireland republic.

The rest of the results were more complex.

The DUP’s share of the vote fell since the last local government election in 2019, but it made small gains from 2022’s Stormont poll. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson cannot be too pleased with that, but, taking into account another reasonable performance from the TUV, it shows that a substantial part of unionism is still adamantly opposed to the protocol, and supportive of policies that reflect that opposition.

It’s concerning that unionists who either back the framework, or feel less motivated by the Irish Sea border issue, seem more inclined to move to Alliance candidates, rather than support the UUP. Naomi Long’s party recorded a similar result to its record performance in the assembly election.

Some Ulster Unionists have argued that the party must ‘shrink to grow’, by taking electoral pain initially, as they reposition themselves as a ‘liberal’ pro-Union alternative. That reasoning is becoming less and less persuasive, as the shrinkage continues, with growth nowhere on the horizon.

Some voters abandoned the UUP because it appeared to be wavering on the Irish Sea border, while others, who are motivated more by ‘progressive’ social issues, chose Alliance rather than something that could be described as ‘Alliance-lite’.

I’m sure Doug Beattie, and his thoughtful Ulster Unionist colleagues, like Sir Reg Empey, think their strategy is more nuanced than that of their rivals, but few voters can be bothered to decode political subtleties; and it’s difficult to summarise the UUP’s message succinctly, even when you pay close attention to politics.

This was the first election where Irish separatist parties achieved a higher vote than pro-Union parties. That was against a background of apathy in unionist areas, where the turnout was significantly lower and it didn’t take into account the strong performance of pro-Union independents.

But however you look at the figures, they were startlingly poor for unionism, which now seems to be failing to reach an entire generation of younger people.

That doesn’t mean that Northern Ireland’s destruction is any closer, but it is changing in ways that compromise its place in the UK. It may be a cliché, but unionism seriously needs a rethink.