Northern Ireland Assembly Election

[Peter]

In my opinion the biggest party will be the DUP, Sinn Fein will also pick up seats but the UUP will still be second. By the looks of it the SDLP vote has collapsed and I think it is likely that their seats will fall away.

The effect of the DUP victory is likely to set the Peace Process to back before the Good Friday agreement. I suspect that a new agreement may be needed and a new set of elections before the Assembly is able to resume its powers.

Peter

[Peter]

Alliance somehow managed to hold all 6 seats from 1998!

Great news!

Unfortunately this is the only good news that has come out of the elections, and unfortunately I fear that those 6 Alliance will never take their seats without new elections. With the DUP holding more seats that than the UUP there will have to be more "Unionist for a day" tactics from the smaller parties to allow Trimble to resume his post as First Minister and this assumes that nut Jeffrey Donaldson stays in line.

The DUP will certainly never let Gerry Adams become Deputy 1st Minister and I doubt too many other Unionists would be happy with it. We are now set back to pre-Good Friday levels and I suspect it will be 5 years before an Assembly takes it seats