2017 NI Assembly Election

[BonnieShels]

On a more sombre note. Marty really isn't well.

I'm sure Arlene will lead the tributes in a careful and considerate manner when the time comes...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...spital-reports

[Gather round]

That poll quoted by RTE

@Danny and Bonnie- you're reading too much into that poll and coming over a bit defensively

What it shows shouldn't be too surprising. Basically that

a) while people have always voted for a future UI in opinion polls, knowing there was no short or even mid-term likelihood of it happening, that will be different if an actual all-Ireland referendum follows a Nationalist 'win' in a NI election

b) the actual costs, or their method of calculation are less important than that voters will need to consider them at all, for the first time

I don't know what would happen in such a Referendum, but the lack of a big majority for yes is plausible. Put another way, can you be certain of massive support for taking on an extra 40% population from a sporadically violent, economically weak and politically turbulent other country, while quite possibly in a recession yourselves?

On the other hand, I do know what Southern governments have and haven't done for the last near-century

That never-changing border through Puckoon

Every time I mention this, people gurn that the Free State/ later Republic was powerless to negotiate any Northern Nationalists back into the State, while conveniently ignoring that for 60 years they claimed in the Constitution that it had already happened. That this was clearly absurd doesn't make it any less dishonest. There is a widespread denial about long-established partitionism in the South. And once you accept that it existed, why would it be guaranteed to change in future?

unionism has lost its long-standing and psychologically-significant parliamentary majority. That's beyond dispute

One party rule was barred after 1972, effectively long-term coalition involving the two biggest blocs became the only viable option after 1998. The POC may still exist enabling 30 MLAs to block something that 50 or 60 support. So while Unionism has clearly taken a bad hit I think you overstate the significance, psychological or otherwise. My own forecast of the Election scoreboard, while wrong, did suggest only 44 Unionist seats, no-one responded in the terms you use above.

And yes Bonnie, I am familiar with the Troubles, having lived in Belfast through the 70s and 80s. Many of my family and neighbors were forced out homes, schools and jobs as a result. Spare us the exaggerated outrage/ rank-pulling.

The statelet is a gerrymandered entity in itself. Formed on the basis of a crude sectarian headcount, it's continued existence has essentially been the effect and sustenance of a gerrymander

Outdated 70s rhetoric. NI continues to exist because the Unionist population was and remains large enough and localised. The specific abuses ended nearly 50 years ago. GM generally is used by all governments (including in Dublin and London) to improve their own electoral chances. I don't see any three seat constituencies electing to Stormont...you are just using gerrymandering as a bogeyman and shorthand for anything the Brits or Unionists do that you don't like.

I perceive attitudes to abortion and reproductive rights to be more hardline generally within political unionism

Generally yes. I'm not sure that it will be a crucial issue for much longer though. As I said, if there's a free vote or even referendum changes will pass. After which, there'll be pro-abortion Unionists and anti-gay marriage Nationalists and a more relaxed electorate generally.

I meant that accessing political nationalism's upper ceilings evidently appears to be easier for women

You said, “nationalism is a much more accessible philosophy for women”, which was pretty (deliberately?) vague. There was at least a possible implication that you thought nationalism was inherently more attractive to women voters in NI. I merely pointed that the election result suggests otherwise

violence in Southern Sweden

My direct experience is limited to a couple of holidays (including Euro 92), but have some people been forming their opinions based on Scandi Noir films and novels?

[Wolfman]

More circular guff.

Eventually the North won't have a choice about its status...whilst the stuff about the border and Irish governments is a complete red herring. No-one on either side has discussed it as they're not interested in modern day gerry mandering whilst Dublin hasn't had the military will in the best part of a 100 years so what do you expect to happen?

Financially as pointed out from other sources the AI economy is forecast to grow, at least in the short-term, though 'sporadically violent, economically weak and politically turbulent other country' is a bit hard on the auld Gerry Fitts(Brits).

[DannyInvincible]

@Danny and Bonnie- you're reading too much into that poll and coming over a bit defensively

I was doing the exact opposite actually; reading very little into it (for the reasons outlined).

a) while people have always voted for a future UI in opinion polls, knowing there was no short or even mid-term likelihood of it happening, that will be different if an actual all-Ireland referendum follows a Nationalist 'win' in a NI election

As already mentioned, two-thirds of those polled last July in a Paddy Power/Red C survey said they'd back unity tomorrow. That's in the immediate short-term; not some nebulous future.

Every time I mention this, people gurn that the Free State/ later Republic was powerless to negotiate any Northern Nationalists back into the State, while conveniently ignoring that for 60 years they claimed in the Constitution that it had already happened. That this was clearly absurd doesn't make it any less dishonest. There is a widespread denial about long-established partitionism in the South. And once you accept that it existed, why would it be guaranteed to change in future?

The dichotomy of or apparent theoretical/practical contradiction between de facto status or de jure status of particular entities is a very common feature of international politics, statecraft, diplomacy and discord. It's indicative of the natural or existential difficulty with differing subjective perspectives, the task of evaluating consensus(es) and deriving legitimacy from there.

One party rule was barred after 1972, effectively long-term coalition involving the two biggest blocs became the only viable option after 1998.... So while Unionism has clearly taken a bad hit I think you overstate the significance, psychological or otherwise. My own forecast of the Election scoreboard, while wrong, did suggest only 44 Unionist seats, no-one responded in the terms you use above.

Well, I'm not saying that the post-GFA unionist majority in Stormont equated to one-party-rule. Clearly, it didn't as systematic checks and balances were put in place once cross-community governance was ensured/protected by mutual agreement.

Have the media been overstating the significance too? It's been the headline story of the election - unionism losing it's "perpetual" or assumed parliamentary majority for the first time in history and nationalism making enough proportionate gains so as to even out the parliamentary playing field - no? Adams' description of the election as a "watershed" moment was given widespread headline media coverage; probably as there's a large dollop of truth in it.

That notion was also the primary focus of (the amusingly ignorant/misinformed) Andrew Neil and his (unseasoned) English guests on 'Sunday Politics' (from 3m59s) yesterday morning:



Isabel Oakeshott described the loss of the unionist majority as "serious", "significant" and (laughably/insultingly) a "very dangerous moment", but clearly grasped that it was an important moment.

FWIW, some of the other comments by Neil and his panel are very revealing and indicate just how far removed people on that side of the Irish Sea are from what actually goes on in the north of Ireland; somewhere those in the British establishment supposedly regard as being an integral part of their country.

To be honest, I hadn't even appreciated the significance of you predicting that designated unionists would win less than 45 seats. I simply wasn't paying close attention for that. Perhaps the same applies to others. I simply didn't envisage that the historic majority would have been lost, so it hadn't really been on my mind or crossed my mind that 44 seats would in fact represent a minority, even though it's self-evident and seems pretty obvious now in hindsight. If it had been specifically pointed out to me, I'm sure its significance would have struck me then and I would most likely have commented on it. As it happened, unionism lost its majority - unexpected, as far as I was concerned - and the import of that then struck me, after the fact.

Issues like the Union flag solely flying over Belfast City Hall and the resulting protests over that being limited to designated days were predicated upon a unionist or loyalist assumption that they, with their British identity, are top dogs, but it's much harder to make such complaints or appeals for preservation of the 'status quo' when you no longer have the superior strength in numbers. The north of Ireland is not a homogenous British or unionist monolith and the loss of a unionist parliamentary majority should hopefully drive that point home for those who still like to believe that it is.

Outdated 70s rhetoric. NI continues to exist because the Unionist population was and remains large enough and localised. The specific abuses ended nearly 50 years ago. GM generally is used by all governments (including in Dublin and London) to improve their own electoral chances. I don't see any three seat constituencies electing to Stormont...you are just using gerrymandering as a bogeyman and shorthand for anything the Brits or Unionists do that you don't like.

The unionist population has remained large enough and localised for the very reason that the statelet itself is a gerrymandered entity. If the border had been drawn differently or elsewhere, the unionist population would not have been or remained large enough to concoct the semblance of democracy. The original gerrymander has maintained partition, which continues to impoverish and divide the island's people; I'm not saying it continues to be a source of specific human or civil rights abuses any longer.

Irrespective of the "rhetoric" one uses, NI was still a cynical construction that denied the expressed democratic will of the Irish people as a whole. Whilst most former colonies, by and large, were granted independence as whole entities in accordance with the wishes of majorities therein (and with the colonial settler population and any territory they inhabited also ceded by Britain), the partition of Ireland was rather unique, no doubt due to the proximity of the north-east of Ireland to Britain, which thereby enabled that latter to militarily enforce its will over the Irish and our affairs a lot easier if necessary.

If a nationalist or republican gave the following description for what they were doing, I would still refer to it as a cynical gerrymander:

I come now to the third and the most distressing of the problems we had to face, and I refer to that of the area. As hon. Members know, the area over which the North of Ireland Parliament is to have jurisdiction is the six counties of Antrim, Down, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh. The three Ulster counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal are to be handed over to the South of Ireland Parliament. How the position of affairs in a Parliament of nine counties and in a Parliament of six counties would be is shortly this. If we had a nine counties’ Parliament, with 64 Members, the Unionist majority would be about three or four, but in a six counties’ Parliament, with 52 Members, the Unionist majority would be about 10. The three excluded counties contain some 70,000 Unionists and 260,000 Sinn Feiners and Nationalists, and the addition of that large block of Sinn Feiners and Nationalists would reduce our majority to such a level that no sane man would undertake to carry on a Parliament with it. That is the position with which we were faced when we had to take the decision a few days ago as to whether we should call upon the Government to include the nine counties in the Bill or be satisfied with the six. It will be seen that the majority of Unionists in the nine counties’ Parliament is very small indeed.

A couple of Members sick, or two or three Members absent for some accidental reason, might in one evening hand over the entire Ulster Parliament and the entire Ulster position, for which we have fought so hard and so long, to the hon. Member and his friends, and that, of course, is a dreadful thing to contemplate. Nothing—and I say this with all sincerity, and I am sure everybody will believe me—nothing was more heartbreaking to us than to take the decision which we felt we had to take a few days ago in Belfast when we decreed more or less that our Unionist fellow countrymen in the three counties of Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal should remain outside the Ulster Parliament; but in judging our action we must ask hon. Members to try and place themselves in our position. They must remember that we are charged with the defence of the Ulster position, and surely that carries with it the duty of undertaking the government and the defence of as much of Ulster as we can hold. We quite frankly admit that we cannot hold the nine counties. I have given the respective figures of the Unionist and the Sinn Fein and Nationalist inhabitants in those three counties, and from them it is quite clear that as soon as the Ulster Parliament was set up, the first task which the Sinn Feiners would set themselves, in those three counties at any rate, would be to make government there absolutely impossible for us. They have made it impossible for the English Government in practically the whole of the South and West of Ireland, and we recognise facts sufficiently clearly to know that they could make it impossible for us to govern those three counties. Therefore, we have decided that, in the interests of the greater part of Ulster, it is better that we should give up those three counties rather than take on a bigger task than we are able to carry out.

[DannyInvincible]

You said, “nationalism is a much more accessible philosophy for women”, which was pretty (deliberately?) vague. There was at least a possible implication that you thought nationalism was inherently more attractive to women voters in NI. I merely pointed that the election result suggests otherwise

I think northern nationalism is a philosophy that is inherently more in tune and at ease with the concept of equality (rather than the concept of traditional privilege, with which "big house" unionism particularly might be more accustomed), and for obvious socio-historic reasons. When people have had to struggle for equality, rights, justice and so forth, it enables (or one would hope or expect it to enable) them to empathise better with those in similar struggles.

Evidently, there is greater room for (what one might call) upward mobility within political nationalism for women (perhaps because of the aforementioned historical and ideological distinction) considering women have twice the representation within political nationalism at Stormont (nearly 40 per cent of 'Nationalist' MLAs are women) as they do within political unionism at Stormont (just 20 per cent of 'Unionist' MLAs are women).

[osarusan]

As already mentioned, two-thirds of those polled last July in a Paddy Power/Red C survey said they'd back unity tomorrow. That's in the immediate short-term; not some nebulous future.

I think the point was that it's easy to say that you'd support unification tomorrow when you know there is no chance of it actually happening any time soon.

[DannyInvincible]

I think the point was that it's easy to say that you'd support unification tomorrow when you know there is no chance of it actually happening any time soon.

Maybe so, but we just have the poll question posed and the resulting answers/figures to go on. Otherwise, we're just speculating as to the motives, interests, knowledge and foresight of those surveyed.

On the significance of unionism losing its parliamentary majority, which GR seems to be downplaying, George Galloway described events as "groundbreaking" here and his interviewee, Kevin Meagher, shared the view:



I think it has been broadly accepted by most commentators and observers as a big deal.

Also, an interesting graph, this, which further emphasises the historical significance of last Thursday:

[Gather round]

Morning all. Will reply in detail this evening (my laptop just crashed with Gorgeous Galloway in full flow ).

[BonnieShels]

Morning all. Will reply in detail this evening (my laptop just crashed with Gorgeous Galloway in full flow ).

I'm even still digesting Danny's treatise. No panic.

[DannyInvincible]

Great. Join a UI, get even less progressive politics

Just came across this interesting graphic (published here today by Eurostat) in respect of the gender pay-gap throughout European states in 2015:

In 2015, the gender pay gap in the European Union (EU) stood at 16.3%. This means that women earned on average 84 cents for every euro earned by a man. Across Member States, the narrowest gender pay gaps were registered in Luxembourg and Italy (both at 5.5%), and the widest in Estonia (26.9%), followed by the Czech Republic (22.5%), Germany (22%), Austria (21.7%) and the United Kingdom (20.8%).

They do state that they've used 2014 data for Ireland (and some other states) but that the pay-gap has remained stable overall, so perhaps it is somewhat relevant to our gender-related side-discussion and national comparisons...

[Wolfman]

Will reply in detail this evening (my laptop just crashed with Gorgeous Galloway in full flow).

Please don't!
There's only so much repetitive whataboutery and 'ironic' (?) smilies we can take...

[Wolfman]

I think the point was that it's easy to say that you'd support unification tomorrow when you know there is no chance of it actually happening any time soon.

Except no-one thinks that's the case. That's just daft. Any transition would take at least 5 years. And that's based on some settlement at least 5-10 years from now.

Anyway back in the, er, real world. This has been Foster's response.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...-35507746.html

The replies on social media are quite amusing to put mildly. And that's mainly 'her 'fellow unionists...

[DannyInvincible]

Rather than see this election result as emphasising the need for self-reflection and a more reasonable, reconciliatory, empathetic approach to business, Arlene's desire appears to be to "no surrender!", "batten down the hatches!" and inevitably recede further towards an eventual wilderness: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...-35507626.html

There is a responsibility on all unionists moving forward. As a party the DUP must reflect on what we can do to remove barriers from people voting for us.

The 225,413 votes for the DUP last week was an impressive number, but it will not be enough to win the next election.

We must not only hold the vote that we already have, we also need to expand to the next generation of voters. That is both in terms of first preference votes and also in terms of our capacity to win transfers.

Ideally, I would like to see a renewed attempt to create unionist unity where the parties would come together.

Failing that, we need to agree transfer pacts where unionists transfer down the ballot paper to each other.

Mike Nesbitt's transfer policy did enormous damage to the UUP, but it also hurt unionism more widely. This must be addressed if unionism is to remain as the dominant voice in Northern Ireland.

As Brian Walker (a liberal unionist, I believe) writes on Slugger:

Arlene is going first for consolidation, the narrow defence of the unionist cause rather than trying first to extend its appeal. While this is only a first move, her idea of consolidation repudiates Mike Nesbitt’s cross community gesture and reinforces the sectarian character of politics. The implications for Sinn Fein and the SDLP are obvious.

There is no hint here of broader views. While there is some logic to it, consolidation does not necessarily amortise unionist appeal and she betrays no sign of acknowledging that united unionism can no longer guarantee the numbers. Although a pact or a united party might make sense in the likes of FST, narrower appeal may mean a smaller overall vote, as the election showed some unionist drift to Alliance and the Greens.

The familiar distrust of all Sinn Fein’s works is still here for all to see.

"Given how Sinn Fein reacted to almost winning the election with their renewed calls for a border poll and for concessions from the Government, can you imagine how they would have reacted to having won the election?"

There is no admission here that she bore a lot of responsibility for that near- victory nor any acknowledgement of the obvious fact that a “ radical republican agenda” cannot be forced through a power sharing government.

She doesn’t seem to realise that Sinn Fein’s hand is immeasurably stronger now outside the Executive, full of bargaining chips for returning, thanks largely to her. She seems obsessed by that border poll.

...

Most of what Sinn Fein want dare I say it, is innately reasonable give or take a detail. None of it undermines the Union one jot. The main problem is that it’s Sinn Fein doing the wanting. Nothing divides them except division itself. The DUP should engage and quickly say: ” why don’t we continue this properly in the Executive?” This would require new protocols for good behaviour, much stronger than Fresh Start.

A merging of the DUP, UUP and possibly even the TUV would be long-term strategic suicide. Whilst any new combined unionist party would undoubtedly receive greater support than each of the three parties designated as 'Unionist' would in isolation, as an overall bloc, unionism would, without a doubt, lose a significant number of votes from liberal, progressive and "default" unionists to more moderate parties like Alliance and the Greens. This would inevitably only further strengthen nationalism's relative clout.

Given Arlene's prior form, it may be little surprise to see this happen. She has done extraordinary damage to unionism as it is. Maybe it'd be a good thing for her to stick around... She's been a blessing in disguise!

[SkStu]

They do state that they've used 2014 data for Ireland (and some other states) but that the pay-gap has remained stable overall, so perhaps it is somewhat relevant to our gender-related side-discussion and national comparisons...

Not to take this further off topic, but from my readings, Ireland has always been one of the more progressive countries when it comes to the role of the woman in society. As a State that was unduly influenced by the Catholic Church for too long in our recent history, we are not without some blemishes and there is still a lot of work to do - but dating back to the times of Brehon law the treatment of women by a patriarchal society was deemed very progressive as compared to other cultures - equality, land ownership, divorce and succession rights and judicial participation the most significant.

This status carried on (informally) through centuries of occupation with the role of women being prominent in a number of rebellions with the most obvious and most celebrated being the participation of women in the 1916 Rising which was the first instance of men voluntarily including and arming women in such a struggle. Ironically enough, it was after 1922 when women gained voting equality that their rights really started declining as the influence of the Catholic Church grew and DeValera's constitution reflects this. I think that the 70's and 90's saw the first real and most significant waves of feminism in Ireland and, again, it was welcomed by our society (as it was at the time still under influence of the Church) more so than others.

Anyway, still a long way to go for women to really, truly stand on equal footing but the history of womens rights in Ireland and the role of the woman is a very interesting study.

[Wolfman]

Don't let a certain Orange groper hear you say that!

[SkStu]

Don't let a certain Orange groper hear you say that!

I haven't seen Ealing Green around here in ages.

[DannyInvincible]

Not to take this further off topic...

Ah, I'll indulge you. It is fascinating stuff, as you say. And sure you've been suspended for a week already anyway, I see, so what's the harm?!

This status carried on (informally) through centuries of occupation with the role of women being prominent in a number of rebellions with the most obvious and most celebrated being the participation of women in the 1916 Rising which was the first instance of men voluntarily including and arming women in such a struggle.

Indeed, the Proclamation of 1916 declared universal suffrage for all Irish men and women. In the UK, only women who were householders and over the age of 30 gained the right to vote in 1918, whilst women over the age of 21 didn't get the vote until 1928.

Ironically enough, it was after 1922 when women gained voting equality that their rights really started declining as the influence of the Catholic Church grew and DeValera's constitution reflects this.

Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch's writing on the post-1922 Marian construction of an Irish (female) identity grounded in the rural, Gaelic and Catholic is fascinating: http://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.p...File/8831/8008

This paper explores how issues centring on landscape, space, and gender intersected with the construction of a new Irish post-colonial identity. In the decades following political independence in 1922 the image of Ireland and the Irish projected by successive governments was that of a bleak but beautiful countryside, peopled exclusively by a sturdy Gaelic-speaking, Catholic people. This construct provided an instantly recognizable and different identity from its former ruler Britain, which was perceived as urban, English-speaking, and Protestant. The determination to be different in every way was further reinforced by projecting the Irish female as chaste, unsophisticated, even unworldly, whose sole role within the new state was that of mother and homemaker. Structures to support this stereotype were instigated in legislation, in the formation of a new constitution, and in Roman Catholic church law. By fixing the position and role of women, as well as defining the very nature of womanhood, the new state could maintain a patriarchy already firmly in place during centuries of British rule.

In the visual arts, this image of Ireland and the Irish was sustained by numerous paintings of the west of Ireland, now promoted as the "real" Ireland. Many of them included women, set against a backdrop of the landscape of the West, dressed in peasant costume (Figure 1). This kind of representation helped to anchor Irish women to a rural identity while at the same time reinforce the supposed links between the female, nature, and nurturing. Intersecting with that model was the Virgin Mary as signifier of moral purity and sexual innocence. This article examines one important aspect of these ideological discourses surrounding Irish female identity: the concerted effort by more zealous nationalists to assert masculinity as the essential characteristic of the "Gael" (the new Irishman) and how this impacted on the construct of the ideal Irish woman (see Nash).

With the coming into being of the Irish Free State in 1922, the idea of creating an Irish identity, separate and different from that of its erstwhile rule became an imperative (see Brown 77-101). So-called "true" Irishness now became exclusively linked to the idea of an ancient and noble pre-conquest past, with a single Gaelic tradition, culture, and language. At the same time there was a move towards a more masculine national identity. The conquered, now free, needed to assert their strength and prowess; thus the Celt (characterized in the science of ethnography in the nineteenth century as a feminine people) metamorphosed into the manly Gael and the land chosen as worthy of the Gael was the western seaboard, a corner of Ireland perceived by writers, artists, and nationalists as the cradle of Irish civilization.

What was so special about this part of the countryside and why did it exercise such a hold on people's political and cultural aspirations? Geographically it is a place of extraordinary wild beauty, a landscape of rugged mountains below which, stretching to the edge of the Atlantic, lies flat bog-land and coastal fields. Those who lived there in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries spoke Irish, dressed in distinctive costume, and pursued a lifestyle which appeared to be untouched bywars, political upheavals, or the less attractive aspects of urban industrialization. These factors gave the location a sense of timelessness and an ongoing continuity with the Celtic past.

...

I think that the 70's and 90's saw the first real and most significant waves of feminism in Ireland and, again, it was welcomed by our society (as it was at the time still under influence of the Church) more so than others.

Having two female heads of state in succession (from 1990 through to 2011) was indeed a very progressive development. In fact, it was the first time in international history that a female president of any country directly succeeded another female president.

[CraftyToePoke]

Given Arlene's prior form, it may be little surprise to see this happen. She has done extraordinary damage to unionism as it is. Maybe it'd be a good thing for her to stick around... She's been a blessing in disguise!

This is its, she is the gift that keeps on giving, she's like a Thatcher who cannot hurt you back but brings you floods of votes, a no down side Thatcher figure. Real treasure.

SFs trickiest job now is to find a way back to the institutions while keeping her at the helm of the DUP .... irony.

[DannyInvincible]

An interesting counterfactual piece on Slugger that draws comparison between the make-up of the 90-seat 2017 asssembly and a notional 90-seat 2016 assembly: http://sluggerotoole.com/2017/03/07/...-2017-results/

*Whyte, Nicholas (22 December 2016). “If the 2016 Assembly election had had five seats per constituency…”.

As Northern Ireland’s turbulent history takes another turn there is a widespread feeling that AE17 has changed the local political situation profoundly. It was a good result for Sinn Féin, there is no doubt about that, and for Alliance too, but what about the others? The DUP admitted to a bad day at the office and Mike Nesbitt has fallen on his sword. That much is clear, but most analysis of the election is fogged by the fact that comparison with the last election is difficult due to the reduction in the Assembly from 108 to 90 seats, meaning that most parties, even if they held their vote, were going to lose seats. The question therefore is not how many seats did the parties gain or lose but rather how did the result stack up against a ‘notional’ 2016 result

The above table, which includes data assimilated by fellow Slugger contributor, Nicholas White, shows what the last assembly would have looked like had it had 90 members. Obviously the parties may have approached the election differently in five seat constituencies, but by crunching the numbers and looking and looking at transfers, Nicholas came up with a notional 90-seat 2016 assembly highlighted in yellow.

As can be seen, the UUP and DUP were both poised to lose five seats in 2017 on a similar share of the vote. The UUP with a small increase in percentage vote lost the expected five seats plus one while the DUP with a modest 1.1% drop in vote share lost not only the five they could have expected to but another five again, double the expected loss. So last Thursday was a particularly bad day for the DUP despite any spin about increasing the overall vote. Foster boosted her vote by the usual ‘keep them out’ tactics but her difficulty was that for every additional DUP voter she got out, she inspired two for Sinn Féin. To add to her woes, the DUP is perhaps now the least transfer-friendly major party which makes picking up the fifth seat in a constituency increasingly difficult.

The UUP decline seems to have bottomed out, for the time being at least, but with the fair wind of the RHI scandal it should have done better and while it slowly increases its vote, the SDLP is losing its support in a similar, glacial manner, though thanks in part to UUP transfers it managed to avoid losing seats.

The centre held, as it was expected to. Neither Alliance nor the Greens were expected to lose seats and neither did. PBP was expected to lose one and it did, ending Eamon McCann’s brief career as an MLA.

The big surprise was of course Sinn Féin. It was expected to lose five seats but ended the day only one down, a gain of four over the 2016 notional result. In a way, the DUP, with crocodile jibes and removing a modest amount of Irish language funding – not enough to save worthwhile money, but enough to provoke – did most of Sinn Féin’s electioneering for it. The DUP, however, is unlikely to be so generous next time round.

[backstothewall]

To be honest, I hadn't even appreciated the significance of you predicting that designated unionists would win less than 45 seats. I simply wasn't paying close attention for that. Perhaps the same applies to others. I simply didn't envisage that the historic majority would have been lost, so it hadn't really been on my mind or crossed my mind that 44 seats would in fact represent a minority, even though it's self-evident and seems pretty obvious now in hindsight. If it had been specifically pointed out to me, I'm sure its significance would have struck me then and I would most likely have commented on it. As it happened, unionism lost its majority - unexpected, as far as I was concerned - and the import of that then struck me, after the fact.

It wasn't just the loss of the overall majority though. That has been coming for years. It was the big bang way that it happened. Unionism didn't just lose it's majority. It came within a couple of hundred votes in Strangford of losing both the majority and plurality on the same afternoon. Nobody dreamed of that happening but it was avoided by a whisker.

Even my "insane" prediction only has 37 Nats v 42 Unionists. Overall majority gone but still a comfortable lead for unionism.

BonnieShels will have to forgive me for bringing the "insane" thing up again. It's going to be my own personal "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment for a while

Interestingly, the Boundary commission proposes to move Crossgar (pop 1800 - 75% Catholic) and half of Carryduff (pop 7000 - 50% Catholic) into Strangford in 2018. All other things being equal there will be an easy Nationalist seat there next time. And on these figures with the new boundaries I'd be looking at the next Westminster election coming out with

SF: 7
SDLP: 2
Alliance: 1
DUP: 4
UUP: 1
Ind U: 1

UB&B will be tight between DUP & SF, though there is every chance that SF could take both those SDLP seats