After the European elections – what way forward for the working class in Northern Ire

[JollyRedGiant]

As far as the media was concerned the story of the Northern Ireland Euro election was the 66,000 votes for Jim Allister and his Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV).

There is no doubt that Allister’s vote is extremely significant. Having split from the DUP in opposition to the power sharing deal with Sinn Fein, his entire campaign was a political broadside against his former party colleagues.

Although the nearly 14% of first preference votes cast for Allister were not enough to get him elected, they were enough to deliver a stunning blow to the DUP and, in the process, to also hang a huge question mark over the future of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The real story of the election, however, was not the Allister vote, it was the huge number who did not bother to vote for any of the candidates. The fact that, for decades, elections in Northern Ireland have been reduced to sectarian headcounts means that turnouts tend to be relatively high as people are encouraged to vote to “keep the other side out”. This time however the familiar sectarian battle cries of the main parties had less of an impact. More than 90% of those who did vote plumped for one or other of the sectarian parties. But the biggest single bloc was those who declared “a plague on all your houses” and didn’t bother to vote at all. The 42.8% turnout is extremely low by Northern Ireland standards.

Socialist Party Northern Ireland

[Catalpa]

As far as the media was concerned the story of the Northern Ireland Euro election was the 66,000 votes for Jim Allister and his Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV).

There is no doubt that Allister’s vote is extremely significant. Having split from the DUP in opposition to the power sharing deal with Sinn Fein, his entire campaign was a political broadside against his former party colleagues.

Although the nearly 14% of first preference votes cast for Allister were not enough to get him elected, they were enough to deliver a stunning blow to the DUP and, in the process, to also hang a huge question mark over the future of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The real story of the election, however, was not the Allister vote, it was the huge number who did not bother to vote for any of the candidates. The fact that, for decades, elections in Northern Ireland have been reduced to sectarian headcounts means that turnouts tend to be relatively high as people are encouraged to vote to “keep the other side out”. This time however the familiar sectarian battle cries of the main parties had less of an impact. More than 90% of those who did vote plumped for one or other of the sectarian parties. But the biggest single bloc was those who declared “a plague on all your houses” and didn’t bother to vote at all. The 42.8% turnout is extremely low by Northern Ireland standards.

Socialist Party Northern Ireland

The British & Irish Governments agreed to an Institutionalized Status Quo based on a sectarian head count.

No wonder people cant be arsed voting up there when the whole political set up is designed around No Change Politics.

But the TUV may well become a thorn in the side of the Political Establishment that will undermine this cosy consensus

- and lead to a collapse in the status of the holders of political Office up there while not really being enough to unseat them.

If a Nationalist 'TUV' were to gain ground that might break the logjam but theres seems to be nothing on the horizon at the moment.