Northern Ireland could experience a historic turning point. For the first time in the history of this nation of the United Kingdom, dominated since its creation (in 1921) by Protestants (mainly unionists, faithful to the link with London), a nationalist party favorable to the reunification of Ireland, Sinn Fein, is well placed to come out on top after the parliamentary elections on 5th May. If this political and societal shift is confirmed, twenty-four years after the end of the troubles, this civil war which pitted nationalist Catholics against unionist Protestants for thirty years, it risks provoking a political crisis and will relaunch the very sensitive debate on Dublin as in London, on the end of the partition of Ireland.
Saturday May 7, twenty-four hours after the beginning of a long and complex count, Sinn Fein, (a party present on the whole of the island, in the Republic of Ireland as in Northern Ireland), arrived in head of the first choices expressed by the voters (18 deputies won against 12 to the unionist party, DUP). In all, 90 deputies must be appointed to sit in the Assembly of Stormont, the Northern Irish Parliament, endowed with substantial powers (health, justice, education), even if the sovereign subjects remain the domain of Westminster.
If this advantage is confirmed, Michelle O’Neill, vice-president of Sinn Fein, will be entitled to claim the post of Prime Minister of the Northern Irish executive. Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the DUP, the unionist party hitherto dominant in Northern Ireland, should be content with the post of deputy prime minister, under a system of power sharing inherited from the peace treaty of Good Friday (1998 ) forcing unionists and nationalists to govern together.
The two positions enjoy almost identical prerogatives, but symbolically they do not have the same scope. And symbols and identities still matter a lot in Northern Ireland. Humiliated, criticized for its support for Brexit and the government of Boris Johnson, the DUP threatens not to participate in the Northern Irish executive. No question, according to him, of return to stormont as long as Northern Irish protocol remains in place. This crucial part of the Brexit treaty, negotiated by London and Brussels, has since 2021 established a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom and Unionists consider it an affront to their identity. British.
“If the protocol is not changed and the trade barriers removed, we are not going back to Stormont”, threatened Edwin Poots, ex-leader of the DUP, just re-elected Northern Irish MP in Belfast South on Friday May 6. The party hopes for an intensification of the negotiations on the protocol between London and Brussels, but the latter have been skating for months. Brussels refuses in any case to abandon this arrangement aimed at preserving the European internal market. “The DUP takes the Northern Irish executive hostage” denounced Michelle O’Neill, a few days before the election.
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