Moderates go south in Assembly elections
They were crushed as the DUP and Sinn Féin electoral juggernauts crashed headlong into each other, spreading their debris all the way to the steps of Stormont.
The UUP was pronounced dead at the scene, while hope lingers for the SDLP as it clings to life in intensive care.
The election acted as coronation for both the DUP and SF, who now reign supreme in their respective communities.
As they guardedly begin to circle each other, probing for weaknesses ahead of the devolution deadline date, Yeats’s The Second Coming again sums up how the two see each other: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The North’s 35th major vote in 34 years delivered a clear message from both traditions — “We want a deal, but we want the hardliners to cut it.”
The poll saw the status quo of 10 years ago inversed. Then the DUP was half the size of the UUP, now it is twice as big.
The SDLP has given Sinn Féin control of the nationalist agenda and left a serious question marking over the future of the former voice of moderate Catholics.
The four main party leaders were all returned, with the DUP’s Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams topping the polls in North Antrim and West Belfast respectively.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan was elected on the first count at Foyle, but UUP leader Reg Empey had a humiliating wait to the third stage before being sent back to Stormont by East Belfast.
Sylvia Hermon, the only remaining MP for the UUP — the party that carved out the Northern statelet and controlled it for so many decades — summed-up its performance in one line: “Woeful, and that’s putting it mildly.”
The DUP upped its vote 4.4% as SF climbed 2.6% with the nationalist parties making a clean sweep of West Belfast — ousting the DUP’s Diane Dodds — with Sinn Féin securing five of the constituency’s six MLAs.
The mainly nationalist area has a unionist enclave on Shankill Road, but this was not enough to help Ms Dodds, who scraped in by 97 votes in 2003.
In another surge, 25-year-old Shinner Daithi McKay came within striking distance of Mr Paisley in North Antrim by polling 7,065 first preference votes — just shy of the DUP leader’s list-topping 7,716.
In South Antrim, Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin topped the poll with 6,313 votes, and in North Belfast the DUP’s Nigel Dodds came out in front with 6,973 votes, while Sinn Féin policing spokesman Gerry Kelly was elected second with 5,414 votes.
The Alliance Party defied gloomy predictions to land seven MLAs, including Hong Kong born Anna Lo, who made history by becoming the first person from an ethnic minority background to win a seat.
The loyalist Progressive Unionists also celebrated a victory for their leader, Dawn Purvis, who held on to the late David Ervine’s East Belfast seat.
Brian Wilson in North Down became the Green Party’s first candidate to be elected to the Assembly.
The UK Unionist Party leader Bob McCartney lost his North Down seat as anti-St Andrews Agreement candidates suffered.
The DUP talk as if the March 26 deadline for devolution is as likely to be re-routed as an Orange Order parade — and they are right to do so.
London and Dublin are not going to let the chance for the final deliverance of cross-community devolution to slip away due to a date in the calendar.
After the first still-born attempt at the Belfast Assembly, Yeates may well call it correctly again: “Surely some revelation is at hand. Surely the Second Coming is at hand.” Well, maybe.
