Calls for unification after record SF vote; UUP leader quits

Posted by Jim on March 3, 2017

Sinn Fein has attained its highest ever share of the vote in the North
of Ireland and came within touching distance of outpolling all of the
other parties as votes were tallied today.

But the headline story of the election may be the resignation of Mike
Nesbitt, the leader of the Ulster Unionist party, who quit this evening
despite marginally increasing his party’s vote share. He stepped down
as their unionist rivals in the DUP maintained their top spot amid
public outrage over corruption and bigotry scandals.

In a news conference this evening, Mr Nesbitt said he had been
reflecting on the results and said the “buck stops here.”

For the past three months, he said, he had been criticising another
party leader for not taking responsibility. He said it would be the
“height of hypocrisy” if he did not take full responsibility for his
party’s poor election performance.

Mr Nesbitt said: “I led into this election. I was the one who argued it
should be a referendum on RHI and on ten years of the DUP and Sinn Fein
leading our Executive government.

“I am the one who suggested in a normal society people would vote on
performance and that the DUP and Sinn Fein did not earn another
mandate. And I’m the one who said this should be Northern Ireland’s
first post-sectarian election based on the economy and education,
health and housing, and that I had a different vision.”

He added: “But the electorate disagreed. They certainly did not give me
a mandate big enough for me to feel justified in continuing in this
position, so I shall not continue in this position.”

After adding the results of first preferences, the DUP won 28.9%, down
1.1% — only marginally above Sinn Fein’s historic 27.9%, an increase
of 3.9%. The UUP reached 12.9% votes, up 0.3%, while the nationalist
SDLP won 11.9% votes, down 0.1%.

As the results came in, both DUP leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Fein
president called for respect for the mandates their parties had been
given by the electorate.

Arriving at the Belfast count centre, Mr Adams said: “It is a vote and
mandate that will have to be respected by the two governments [British
and Irish], by all the other parties… for an end to the old status
quo, for a new beginning as to how we do our business here.”

He also said the results were a vote of confidence in Irish unification
and his party’s position on Brexit.

Sinn Fein has called for a vote on reunification and, in the interim,
for the Six Counties of Ireland under British rule to receive a special
designated status within the EU after Britain’s exit from the bloc.

He said: “It is a vote for Irish unity, a vote for us together as a
people. As Ian Paisley famously told Martin McGuinness, we don’t need
Englishmen to govern us.”

Mr Adams also criticised the DUP’s behaviour in the last government.
“They lost the run of themselves.. They got themselves in a little
bubble. That bubble has been punctured by Martin McGuinness and by
others.”

He also suggested that the DUP nominate someone other than Ms Foster to
act as the unionist leader in the next Executive.

However, Foster was typically uncompromising. Speaking following her
election at the Omagh count centre, Ms Foster said Sinn Fein must
respect the mandate “that has been given to me”.

“I think it’s very clear that [the election] was absolutely not about
the RHI [corruption scandal], it may have been the excuse but it
certainly wasn’t the cause of the election.

“The cause of the election was Sinn Fein and republicanism wanting to
rerun [last year’s] election… they have mobilised their vote in a
very effective way.”

Ms Foster said she was pleased that the DUP vote was still the largest
party in terms of votes cast.

“It is very clear in terms of unionism that it is the DUP that speaks
for unionism.”

But there have been key setbacks for the DUP and it still remains
unclear if the party will retain the key threshold of thirty seats in
order to retain their veto over political change. In one setback, the
notoriously bigoted Nelson McCausland failed to hold his seat in north
Belfast as the constituency looked that it might return a historic
majority of three nationalist seats out of five.

Meanwhile, the vote share of the cross-community Alliance Party rose
significantly, while People before Profit, despite fielding more
candidates, saw their share fall, losing the seat of party leader,
veteran Derry socialist Eamonn McCann, after less than a year.

The SDLP’s Justin McNulty attributed the strong Sinn Fein vote to the
bigotry and sectarianism of Arlene Foster. “Her dismissive remarks had
people out in droves,” he said. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood admitted
Sinn Fein were the “net beneficiaries” of public outrage at the actions
of the Stormont government.

“The Sinn Fein vote has gone up very highly, which is a result of the
overall context of this election, which has been pitched as a battle
between the DUP and Sinn Fein,” he said. “Those of us in the middle
have been clearly squeezed.”

Another historic success for Sinn Fein announced this evening was the
success of Philip McGuigan in topping the poll in the unionist
heartland of North Antrim, synonymous with the name of unionist
firebrand Ian Paisley.

There was also a shock Sinn Fein success in South Down, a traditional
bastion of the SDLP, where the party topped the poll as the SF vote
climbed above that of the SDLP. There were also prospects of unexpected
gains in East Derry and Fermanagh-South Tyrone.

Following this election, Sinn Fein and the DUP will have three weeks to
resolve a wide gulf of differences and form a new administration.
Otherwise, the London government has threatened to reimpose full,
direct British rule.

With 53 of the 90 seats filled as the examination of the voters’ lower
order preferences continues, the current tally of the parties is:

Sinn Fein 27.9% (+3.9%) 22 seats DUP 28.1% (-1.1%) 14 seats UUP 12.9%
(+0.3%) 7 seats Alliance 9.1% (+2.1%) 5 seats SDLP 11.9% (-0.1%) 4
seats People Before Profit 1.8% (-0.2%) 1 seat TUV 2.6% (-0.9%) 0 seats
Green 2.3% (-0.4%) 0 seats

Some of the 18 constituency counts are set to extend into Saturday. An
update on the results will be included in the weekly publication of
Irish Republican News to be published tomorrow.