Robinson affair livens up Strangford election contest

In the sprawling Northern Ireland constituency of Strangford tales of expenses and affairs have livened up a traditionally predictable contest.

Incumbent MP Iris Robinson resigned in a mixture of disgrace and pity after she admitted to mental health problems and a brief affair with a man young enough to be her grandson.

She borrowed £50,000 from two property developers to help lover Kirk McCambley, 19, establish a cafe business near Belfast and the matter may have scandalised some of her Democratic Unionist Party’s support in the area despite her strong track record on issues like healthcare.

Earlier revelations pointed to significant food bills on Westminster expenses shared with her husband, First Minister Peter Robinson. She also tried to claim £300 for a Mont Blanc fountain pen.

Vying to be her replacement are popular local DUP Assemblyman, farmer and country sports fan Jim Shannon and Mike Nesbitt, a former TV presenter and victims’ advocate standing for the Tory/Ulster Unionist alliance, the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists New Force party.

At the last Westminster elections in 2005 the DUP polled 57% of the vote to the UUP’s 21%. Mrs Robinson had a 13,000 majority. Unusually, every one of the candidates is standing for the first time in 2010.

Henry Patterson, professor of politics at the University of Ulster, said the real unknown factor was the degree to which the DUP has been hurt by the Iris Robinson affair, expenses and family land deals.

“The DUP will be pressing the fact that Shannon is a good constituency MLA, he has got a good record on potholes,” he said.

“What Shannon has going for him is the fact that he has inherited a large majority, he is an established name in the constituency and he is not tainted by the expenses, he is hoping that the local will triumph.”

Mr Nesbitt, who was out pressing the flesh at Ballynahinch Market this week amid the model cars and fresh meat stalls, will be hoping to capitalise from what he says is disillusion with politics which may leave some DUP voters staying at home.

A little less fresh-faced than during his school days as a 400 metre hurdles runner – for Ireland – in the British Schools Championships of 1974, Mr Nesbitt would be only the second MP elected to have run for local club Ballydrain Harriers. The first was incongruously former hunger striker and republican prisoner Bobby Sands, who lived locally as a youth.

Mr Nesbitt, an unknown in politics until a few months ago, was keen to emphasise his detachment from old Orange and Green politics and said Parliament needed an advocate at the national level rather than another representative concentrated on sorting out potholes. He said his party would restore the link with earnings for pensions while he greeted elderly shoppers with easy charm.

One woman said she was considering voting Conservative.

However she complained: “People like you are full of big ideas but then they get in and realise there’s very little they can do, they just have to go with the flow.

“There’s people that never work a day in their lives who are getting more than us.”

Newtownards is the largest town in the constituency, Dundonald and Carryduff are part of Belfast’s suburbs while towns like Comber and Killyleagh are a combination of country market towns and Belfast dormitories.

This is a largely comfortable, suburban area and most local farmers have traditionally been prosperous. It is one of the most solidly Protestant constituencies (80% Protestant, 15% Catholic), which is reflected in the overwhelming unionist majority at the polls.

Pauline Rea, deputy editor of the Newtownards Chronicle, was unequivocal in her assessment.

“Jim Shannon will have a clean run of it and he will definitely top the poll but he will exceed what Iris Robinson has done in the past,” she said.

“It will be won on personality not on politics. There’s a lot of public admiration for Jim, I don’t think there will be any taint (from the Robinson affair).

“There was never any love lost between Jim and Iris Robinson. The whole Robinson thing has nearly disappeared at the minute on a local scale.”

From the distribution of local council seats the DUP’s advantage looks pronounced, with the DUP holding 11 to the Ulster Unionists’ six.

Five of those DUP seats are held by defectors from the UUP, old anti-Belfast Agreement Ulster Unionists.

Yet the DUP has also suffered its own setbacks, with former party member Terry Williams standing for Westminster for the anti-Stormont power-sharing Traditional Unionist Voice movement and he may attract some of the DUP’s hardline support.

Former social worker Mr Williams joined the DUP in 2001 and claims he is the only one to stay true to his principles after he left the party in 2007 following their decision to enter government with Sinn Féin.

Campaigning in the Rosehill estate, Newtownards, the issues he faced were more local.

“You did not vote for Ards football club,” one man said in scornful fashion, before closing the door in distaste at a local council dispute over whether to give public land to the team.

An unabashed Mr Williams defended his decision to oppose the move.

“I stand by my principles,” he said.

In Ballygowan, a village where tattooed men in their forties mixed with elderly ladies doing their shopping, the Alliance candidate Deborah Girvan, formerly a PE teacher and advocate of integrated education, was canvassing in an estate of picket fence-style bungalows.

Accompanying her was linen manufacturer John Andrews, a descendant of the Ulster Unionist Andrews dynasty which provided one wartime prime minister as well as the designer of the ill-fated Titanic.

“I have always been Alliance,” was all he would say about his motives.

Lack of work is an issue which unites most constituencies across the UK and was of serious concern to one plasterer who has to care for his seriously ill wife as well as pay the bills.

“I have worked three months in the last year,” he told Ms Girvan.

In an area which has also been touched by the recession, job insecurity and local issues are on the voters’ minds.