12NEWS
I
have just been given the silent treat-
ment by a butcher in Jackies Quality
Meats in Belfast’s Shankill Road,
ground zero on the loyalist side
during the Troubles in Northern
Ireland, when I meet Sarah. She is 77
and says I should ask “ordinary peo-
ple”. What would she think if, as is
widely predicted, Sinn Fein wins the
most seats in assembly elections on
Thursday? She does not miss a beat:
“I think there will be a war.”
In 21 years of covering politics, I have
never heard such a blunt statement from
a member of the public. “I could never be
reconciled to it,” she adds. “I admit I’m a
bigot but they are murderers.”
This is Belfast politics, red in tooth and
claw, the front line in an election
showdown that promises to be Northern
Ireland’s most consequential, a game of
4D political chess that will shape the
future not only of the province but also
of Boris Johnson, Brexit, Britain’s rela-
tionship with the EU and the future of the
United Kingdom itself.
This year marks the 101st anniversary
of Northern Ireland and, on the face of it,
could mark a significant step towards
reunification of the island of Ireland. If
Sinn Fein emerges as the largest party,
after finishing one seat behind the DUP in
2017, it will be the first time the
nationalists have won in the province.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill would be
nominated as first minister. Her party is
also well placed to win elections in the
republic, which are due by 2025.
In Belfast, echoes of a violent past are
never far away. I met Sarah within a short
walk of murals and posters extolling the
virtues of gun-toting loyalists and a com-
memoration of the “slaughter of the inno-
cents”, the victims of an IRA bombing.
A DUP figure says: “It’s like the Tories
in 1992 or 1997. Either we cling on against
expectations or we get swept away.”
The 1992 comparison also enervates
Sinn Fein. A party official recalls: “Neil
Kinnock thought he had won in 1992 and
spent the last week celebrating. There is
no such complacency here.”
Sinn Fein has pursued a softly-softly
campaign in which its constitutional
aspirations are seldom mentioned. One
of the campaign’s faces is John Finucane,
a former solicitor and lord mayor of Bel-
fast who became MP for North Belfast in
2019, a seat he has never taken.
Finucane, 42, was eight when he saw
his father, Pat, shot dead at home by loy-
alist gunmen, but is the embodiment of
Sinn Fein’s desire to present a moderate
face.
“I’ve had my own personal life experi-
ences, the murder of my father,” he says,
matter-of-factly. “But the way I was raised
is that I will respect anyone who wants to
sit down and work together. It doesn’t
cause me a moment’s hesitation.”
Finucane has the polished cheeks ofPrince Charles
with Mary Lou
McDonald, left,
and her deputy,
Michelle O’NeillDavid Cameron and the political fluency
of a young Tony Blair. He wears man-of-
the-people jeans and brown boots. “I
don’t want any triumphalism,” he says.
“If we are returned as the biggest party,
it’s not a case of jumping up and down
and rubbing anyone’s noses in it. No one
on the Shankill estate or anywhere else
has anything to fear from us.”
A reminder of Sinn Fein’s ultimate
mission sits with us. The press officer
Seán Mag Uidhir is a grizzled former
republican prisoner in his early sixties.
His brother, Harry Maguire, was found
guilty of killing two British corporals who
strayed into an IRA funeral in 1988.
“Everyone knows we are republicans,”
he says. “But it’s not what this election is
about.”
Sinn Fein has made the election about
family incomes being squeezed. Finu-
cane says: “The two big things we are
getting on the doorstep are the cost of liv-
ing and health.” This is rich political ter-
rain when close to a third of the popula-
tion is on a hospital waiting list. Sinn Fein
has promised a three-year health budget
and a rise in spending of £1 billion.
To its rivals, this focus in recent
months on issues others have always put
above the constitution sticks in the craw.
Two miles away, Matthew O’Toole, anSDLP assembly member for South
Belfast, is working his patch around
Queen’s University. “Sinn Fein are a bit
like the eBay bidder who waits until the
last minute and then bids 10p more than
the other person,” he says.
The party’s economic plans are
straight from the playbook of the British
left. In Northern Ireland they are offering
£230 to every household; in the republic
the promise is council housing for the
young and forcing developers to increase
the supply of homes. Even their oppo-
nents acknowledge that Sinn Fein can be
effective. In Shankill Road, a woman in
her fifties complains: “Sinn Fein build
houses for their people. We haven’t had a
house built here for years.”
Sinn Fein’s outreach efforts have even
reached the royal family. On Finucane’s
first day as lord mayor in 2019, he
welcomed Prince Charles to the city.
Behind the scenes the communications
have continued. Charles sent a get-well
letter to Mary Lou McDonald, who
replaced Gerry Adams as Sinn Fein
leader in 2018, after she contracted Covid
last April. She wished him a speedy
recovery from his own brush with the
virus. She then sent letters of sympathy
to the Queen and Charles on the death of
Prince Philip.If this is a sign of a more conciliatory
approach, Sinn Fein has also picked up
the habit of discrediting the mainstream
media, a tactic of the populist right.
McDonald is suing RTE, the Irish state
broadcaster, for defamation, a tactic
Adams has used against the BBC.
It is likely to lose votes in this election
compared with 2017 but might well win
because its main rival, the DUP, is in
speedier retreat. It has tried to make the
election about the Northern Ireland pro-
tocol, part of the Brexit deal designed to
prevent a hard Irish land border, which
resulted in checks on goods passing from
Britain into Northern Ireland and disrup-
tion to supply chains.
While the protocol is seen as “the
biggest problem” by the two senior DUP
figures I speak to, it is unclear whether
voters share this concern. One recent poll
placed it 11th on a list of Unionist voters’
priorities.
On Shankill Road I find business own-
ers tight-lipped about the protocol until
Michelle, 60, who runs a holistic healing
centre, says: “I’m changing my vote
because of it.” She gets her stock from
Great Britain and has seen costs rise by
5 to 10 per cent. Like many, she blames
the DUP for the imposition of a Brexit
deal that does not work for her.T
he other message, delivered by half
a dozen people I speak to, is that the
DUP has failed. “They’re dino-
saurs,” says a bearded man sitting
outside a carpet shop who says his
name is Mr B. “I don’t think they or the
other lot should be allowed anywhere
near Stormont. We haven’t had a proper
government for 25 years.”
Michelle has another complaint: the
way a cabal of Free Presbyterian men
ousted the DUP leader Arlene Foster last
year. “I liked Arlene,” she says. “I’m
voting TUV. Most people on this road are
doing the same.”
TUV is Traditional Unionist Voice, run
by Jim Allister, 69, a barrister-politician
who once worked for Ian Paisley, and
who is opposed to the protocol in all its
forms. His success has driven the DUP
leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to adopt a
harder line.
The other driver of this entrenchment
is Jamie Bryson, a self-described
“Marmite” loyalist activist who is leading
rallies and protests against the protocol.
“You see Bryson at the microphone at
these rallies and Donaldson standing at
the side like a sheep,” one observer says.
“The DUP ate the Ulster Unionists and
now they’re frightened of being eaten by
the TUV.”Either
the DUP
clings on
or it’ll be
swept
awaySinn
Fein’s
leader
wished
Charles
wellHaving ruthlessly focused on the young and the cost of living, Sinn Fein is on course to be the largest
party on both sides of the border. Unification is barely mentioned, says Tim Shipman in BelfastRISING REPUBLICANISMUnited Kingdom United Ireland Don’t knowSource: Polls collated by Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of IrelandSimple majority threshold (50%+)1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020020406080%Various polls show support for a united Ireland has been growing in Northern Ireland in the past decade12POLITICS
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