Sinn Féin Republicans are given winners in nationwide elections to be held in less than a week, a political earthquake that could bring Belfast closer to Dublin.
 |
| [Brexit is driving Northern Ireland more closer Ireland] |
Brexit is driving Northern Ireland ever closer to union with the Republic of Ireland. According to surveys, the independence party Sinn Féin is in the lead in the elections in the country, which, along with Scotland, is the portion of the United Kingdom that has been most affected by the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union. Northern Irish voters will go to the polls on May 5th to renew the Belfast parliament, and the takeover has created a new political environment, with a significant electoral disparity between nationalists and unionists, who are normally the first party to be elected in Northern Ireland. As reported in the Belfast Telegraph, according to statistics gathered by LucidTalk and released in the newspaper, the Catholic independence party headed by Michelle O'Neill has a six-point lead over its major challenger, the Democratic Unionist Party (Dup), with 26 percent of votes cast.
It has always campaigned for the independence of Belfast from London and the restoration of Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. Sinn Féin is the primary nationalist party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and it is also a social democratic and republican party. This organization served for a long time as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Irish revolutionary army that carried out Catholic republicans' independence demands against English Protestants via violent action up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreements in 1998. In previous elections in the United Kingdom, their candidates were always present, but once elected, those who were elected refused to sit on the benches of Westminster, claiming that London had too much authority.
Following the historic agreement that brought three decades of bloodshed to an end, Sinn Féin and the Protestant Dup (which is Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, meaning it is in favor of unification with the United Kingdom) are required to govern together in Belfast, with the prime minister being expressed by the party that garners the most votes, and the vice premier expressed by the party that receives the least votes. However, the Dup has said that it would not engage into any new power-sharing arrangements until and until the Northern Ireland Protocol, which is a component of the Brussels-London deal that controls Belfast's commerce with the rest of the United Kingdom after Brexit, is signed and implemented.
A brief summary of the protocol is that we must not revert to a "hard" border, that is, a physical separation between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland (as sanctioned by the 1998 agreements). Customs controls between Ireland, which is a member of the European Union, and the United Kingdom will be relocated to the coasts of the Irish Sea as a result of this. For unionists, this is an untenable scenario since it puts into doubt the continuation of geographical continuity with the United Kingdom. The protocol discussions between British and European officials, on the other hand, are now at a halt. In accordance with some rumors, the London government is considering unilaterally "writing off" those parties to the Brexit agreement that Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not agree with, despite an earlier warning from the EU that such a move would constitute a violation of the treaty signed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson himself.
While nationalists have seen their support drop from 27.9 percent in the 2017 early elections to 26 percent now, it is also true that their unionist opponents have seen their popularity plunge in the previous year and a half. Since 2003, the Dup has had the majority of seats in relation to Stormont. After receiving 31 percent in a previous election, the Dup has failed to get more than 20 percent less than a week after the vote, even though its head Jeffrey Donaldson has expressed confidence in the party's ability to win another election. When we consider that the Northern Irish voting system is proportional with double preference, the picture becomes even more complicated: candidates can collect votes in excess of those who are elected or eliminated, giving them a chance to win the final seats in the multinational constituencies in the process.
Several commentators believe that an institutional crisis is building on the horizon, after the painful resumption of cohabitation following the recent elections. It might have "severe constitutional ramifications," according to Robert Hayward, a member of the British House of Lords, if the power-sharing accords in Stormont were to be thrown into the heart of the continuing debate with Brussels. Despite the fact that Sinn Féin is downplaying Dup's charges of a prospective Irish unification referendum to be offered after a hypothetical poll, O'Neill recently pointed out that Brexit has caused many people to doubt Belfast's role in the nation. Since the Brexit referendum win in 2016, the United Kingdom has "taken us out of the EU and stolen our European citizenship."