Northern Ireland General Discussion

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Enoch Powell's old constituency (South Down) is now a safe SDLP constituency, he did not receive a significant crossover vote from Catholics, and he was absolutely not any kind of moderate.

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'Actually nonsectarian, but not exactly working class orientated' as one satirical work from the early 1980s put it. Increasingly mostly just public sector middle class.

On tuther thing, Two UUP MPs voted with the Callaghan government in the vote of no confidence; Harold McCusker (Armagh) and John Carson (North Belfast). Carson was promptly deselected, while McCusker ended up as a deputy leader. Make of that what thou will, etc.

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Perhaps it's because I'm not from there, but seriously people, it's just a flag.

Maybe because it's not really about the flag.

Or, rather, it is about the flag, but the flag is not actually a flag.

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As noted elsewhere, longtime South Down SDLP MP (and electoral vanquisher of Enoch Powell) Eddie McGrady has died.

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No, but the worst of it is.

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Peter Robinson has had a heart attack.

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So long as the Assembly is merely suspended rather than ended then Direct Rule is technically fine. It was basically the norm before the St. Andrews Agreement.

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Of course there are Prod drug dealers as well. The Loyalist groups all got into the act. Its a sign of real cross-community progress in its way.

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Peter Robinson has resigned.

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Would there be elections next year by any chance?

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Because SAVE ULSTER FROM SODOMY presumably.

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Northern Ireland isn't allowed to have democracy. Thats the whole point of the GFA: no one ever gets to implement their (inevitably horrific) platform and elections serve as a means of apportioning patronage and public money.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That said, there's definitely a "Bible Belt" vibe in parts of NI, especially in County Antrim, and that goes beyond Paisley's church and would have provided a lot of the DUP's original base.

A majority of DUP members are also members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That said, there's definitely a "Bible Belt" vibe in parts of NI, especially in County Antrim, and that goes beyond Paisley's church and would have provided a lot of the DUP's original base.

A majority of DUP members are also members of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.

So the voter base is significantly different demographically from the membership?

Massively. The membership is also tiny. A lot of them are also estate agents, would you believe.

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What proportion of the church members are members of the party?

At least a tenth, maybe as much as a quarter.

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Lord Trimble (David Trimble) former leader of the UUP (1995-2005), former First Minister (1998-2002) and one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the late John Hume) has died. He was seventy seven.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is worth remembering that under the GFA a border poll can only be called if it is clear that the result would almost certainly be a change in the status quo. Of course exactly what the threshold is in terms of presumed public opinion is not really clear - it's unlikely that consistent leads would be enough, which then means a matter of gauging how large and how secure, and that would be a judgement call on the part of the Secretary of State. The point, though, is that this really isn't like an ordinary hypothetical referendum, even if it often suits people to pretend otherwise (e.g. the DUPs rather pathetic attempts to claim, during this year's elections, that if they fell behind Sinn Fein in seats then a border poll would follow swiftly).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Seven years ago that would have been true but Brexit has undermined a lot of previous assumptions. One of the defining features of Alliance support is being pro-EU and what polling we've seen suggests that a plurality of Alliance voters are now small-n nationalist.

Yeah, Brexit has upended things so much that we've moved from a situation where, frankly, even a Northern Ireland with a substantial but not overwhelming Catholic absolute majority would probably not actually vote for unification, to one where the longterm future is genuinely unclear. Backing it has been a spectacular own-goal even by the standards of the Unionist parties.

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Israel is a model of functionality by comparison to Northern Ireland.

Yes, it has at least been possible for Israeli governments to pass legislation at various points over the past few years.

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21% of Catholics in Northern Ireland support unionism.

Potentially voting to maintain the status quo on 'just want to grill' grounds is not the same as 'supporting Unionism'.

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Well, the status quo is unionism...

No, the status quo is (frequently suspended) compulsory power-sharing within the framework of the United Kingdom. Unionism is something else and isn't a term that can be used loosely.

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There is talk that "this time, it might be different" - but I will believe it when I see it.

Especially as they said that the last, what, three times? Or four?

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Postmodern clown-car stuff, just surreal.

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It's fun to be old enough to find vicious irony in 'Jeffrey Donaldson suffers through hellish late-night meeting due to hardliners who will not compromise'.