Stakeholder

At home Sir Reg Empey has staked his reputation on their being at least enough of a Cameron spill over to allow him to take South Antrim from Willie Mc Crea. It’s doubtful if there is enough of a Tory whirlwind to sweep in Trevor Ringland or media luvvie Mike Nesbitt. What looked like an open goal in Strangford for Nesbitt following Iris-gate has narrowed as Nesbitt performed lamentably on TV and seemed patronising about constituency issues like gaping pot-holes. One suspects that celebrity candidates in the North have a higher opinion of themselves than the cynical and street wise electorate. Peter Robinson will be relieved to survive the election and if he takes home most of his colleagues he will have bought time. It’s likely that the DUP vote will be considerably down but the TUV will struggle make a break-through; though some TUV candidates are impressive media performers when compared to the angry man image portrayed by their leader. Much to the relief of most of Northern Ireland there will be no ‘Ford factor’. Stephen Agnew of the Greens is certainly the most impressive newcomer but Northern Greens as a whole still look like a group of vegan, sandal-wearing, allotment tending oddities.

The battle on the nationalist side is interesting because its comes against a back-drop of  a new and untested SDLP Leader and the Teflon Sinn President Gerry- I was never in the IRA –Adams. The Sinn Fein Leader has not had a good year. He actually looks old and tired but in his own seat he is unlikely to feel threatened by a nearly invisible SDLP opposition. Across the North Sinn Fein are fighting this election on their Assembly record which –Catastrophic Ruane apart- is competent. With unionists accepting the match-making skills of the Orange Order in Fermanagh/South Tyrone; Sinn Fein could not resist the temptation to respond in kind by inviting the SDLP to co-join in a sectarian pact. Correctly the SDLP declined hoping nationalists share their principled stance. While there’s considerable sympathy for Gildernew the interference of the Orange Order makes a pact sectarian in origin by unionists and response by nationalists.

Jeremy Thorpe once said of Harold Macmillan ‘greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his friends for his life’ and so too with Gerry Adams, his sacrificial lamb being laid down for his sectarian clarion call is the South Belfast MLA, Alex Maskey. Even in South Down letter-boxes we received Mr Maskey’s apologia for standing aside and promising as ‘your representative I will continue to serve South Belfast’. Not much of a sacrifice when with less than 3000 votes; Susan Boyle will win Miss World before Sinn Fein take South Belfast.

A good election for the SDLP and indeed Northern politics will be the retention of their three seats- no matter how ungainly they get across the line. Sinn Fein’s electoral dominance on the nationalist side of politics is not healthy nor is it the best vehicle to persuade unionists about a shared future in the North, let alone encourage them to have confidence in an inclusive united Ireland. As the SDLP look to the future the electorate should at least afford Margaret Ritchie the space to be heard. Passionate about a shared future she knows once dug in it’s a long way back from sectarian trenches.