by John Coulter
Northern Ireland’s main Unionist party, the Democratic Unionists, endured a humiliating electoral disaster in the battle for the province’s three MEPs. For 30 years, the DUP had always topped the poll ahead of its bitter rivals the Ulster Unionists.
But while the three-way split in the pro-union vote meant that Sinn Fein, the DUP’s power-sharing partner at Stormont, topped the poll, it was a bittersweet victory for republicans. In the Republic, Sinn Fein’s deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald lost the party’s sole seat in the European Parliament.
Typically ironic of Irish politics, the real victory in Northern Ireland went to the outgoing MEP who lost his seat – Jim Allister of the hardline anti-power sharing Traditional Unionist Voice movement. Originally elected as a poll-topper in 2004, Allister quit the DUP in protest at power sharing. His decision to run again as TUV ensured that the new Ulster Unionist/Conservative alliance was elected within the quota and ahead of the DUP.
Veteran Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson’s victory was the first electoral success for the pact with the Tories. Known officially as the Ulster Conservative and Unionist New Force, a David Cameron victory at the next general election could see any UUP MPs or peers take a position in a Tory cabinet.
The SDLP failed to win back its seat from Sinn Fein, prompting more talk of a merger with a party from the Irish Republic – either the election-battered Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.
But it is the long-term ramifications for power sharing which will give the DUP/Sinn Fein government at Stormont the biggest nightmare. If Mr Allister’s TUV repeats its success at the next Assembly poll in 2010 – even on a 43 per cent turnout – the hardline right-wing movement will end up with 15 seats, holding the balance of power among the parliament’s 108 MLAs.
