Friday, 22 January 2010
Tory Gains
Rumour has it that the price of UUP support for the devolution of policing and justice will be a free run both in Belfast South and in Fermanagh & South Tyrone, where the split Unionist vote results in Nationalist MPs (one SDLP, one Sinn Fein) despite the Unionist majorities of votes cast. The DUP is also being assiduously courted with a view to the coming hung Parliament. Well, of course. The DUP now has a de facto Leader as Powellite in her integrationism as in her Book of Common Prayer Anglicanism. Northern Ireland's biggest Tory gain of all.
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Conveniently, Foster is the confirmed DUP candidate for FST. But now double-jobbing is looking like it's had its day and she has found something better to do. Nice.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it lovely when a plan comes together?
ReplyDeleteFermanagh South Tyrone
ReplyDelete2007 Nationalists 50% Unionists 46%
2005 Nationalists 53% unionist 47%
2003 nationalists 50% unionists 48%
2001 nationalists 53% unionists 47%
1998 nationalists 48% unionists 47%
Take it up with the UUP. Apparently, this is a done deal. Mind you, where have you heard that before?
ReplyDeleteIt would take a joint SDLP/SF candidate to keep the seat green if anything could against a joint UUP/DUP one. No chance. Assuming no traditional SF dirty tricks on polling day that is. All in the past I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteOh, they'll fight dirty.
ReplyDeleteThe SDLP taking Belfast South was primarily of sociological interest: where the at least broadly Nationalist community now lives, and what that says about it. Losing that, and only back to the UUP, would hardly matter.
But Sinn Fein - not the SDLP, but Sinn Fein - losing the most westerly seat in the Six Counties, and that, even if to a local candidate, nevertheless to a mainland party? It would send shockwaves.
Still, I have had it confirmed this evening by an avid reader who is very well-connected in these sorts of circles: the UUP regards it as in the bag, presumably because of the insurmountable split in the Nationalist vote, but also because they do seem to regard the Unionist majority there as the true state of affairs on the ground.
Anyway, they only need the first one, and they are going to get it. A mainland party (it doesn't matter which one - Labour is at least nominally still the party of Ernest Bevin, Jim Callaghan and Roy Mason) is going to remove Sinn Fein from the most westerly seat in Northern Ireland. If there really is a Nationalist majority there, then the point will be even more pointedly made.
Now, will the deal also include the UUP's standing aside in DUP-held seats? After all, somewhere like Upper Bann, or Lagan Valley, would be a safe Tory seat if it were in England. But the DUP suddenly needs the UUP far more than the other way round.
And then there is the question of what to do about North Down. But then, there always is the question of what to do about North Down.
Arlene is being true to her roots alright.
ReplyDeleteLetting Cameron have two currently nationalist seats that were unionist until recent years, one from the SDLP and one from Sinn Fein, one urban and one rural, one very middle class and one a lot less so, one well east of the Bann and one as far west as you can go.
She is letting the Tories take those back for the Union and they are letting her have P&J in return for that most powerful integrationist signal ever. After all P&J aren't run centrally anywhere else so the integrationist case still stands.
Policing is controlled by central government in London, one of the many examples of how London is run as a colony but no one there seems to mind. You are right about everywhere else, though.
ReplyDeleteTrimble seems to have wound up as an integrationist, joining the Tories well before the new alliance, merger, takeover, whatever it is.
ReplyDeleteHe campaigned for the right of NI trade unionists to join the Labour Party. It's the only place on earth where you can't.
ReplyDeleteTrimble realises that he could have been, and just about might yet be, a Tory Cabinet Minister. But he also realises that he could have been a Tory Prime Minister, which (although it is still possible in principle) in practice you can't do from the Lords.
I don't know why he took a peerage. He could have breezed into any safe Tory seat where the sitting MP was retiring.