Only two constituencies provide a spark of interest in North election

THE British general election campaign has reached the half way point and is now beginning to heat up.

However, in Northern Ireland the election remains largely dormant. Even though both local and Westminster elections are being held on May 5, there is little visible electoral activity on the ground (or even up the polls) in the North.

Of course the media there is covering the election story, but there is a sense that it is merely going through the motions profiling the constituencies, covering the campaign manifesto launches, but doing so dutifully rather than with any sense of real newsworthiness. The election, in fact, has seldom made the front pages of the North's daily papers and, when it does, it is usually because of stories of divisions or personality clashes within some of the parties.

Most of the sideshows which have attracted attention have hurt the Ulster Unionist Party.

The former leader, James Molyneaux, has not only come out in support of his protege, Jeffrey Donaldson, who contests this time for the DUP, but he has also gone public in endorsing another DUP candidate, Jimmy Spratt, in South Belfast.

Meanwhile, the UUP claim to the votes of the 'responsible' elements of unionist society targeted with the party's peculiar slogan, 'Decent people vote Ulster Unionist' has not been helped by the fact that last week one of their candidates had his house searched by police conducting a money-laundering enquiry.

The SDLP has also given some good copy owing to the publication of an email exchange between Mark Durkan and Kieran Deeny about whether the party would support the independent hospital candidate in West Tyrone.

On the postering front the DUP campaign has been the strongest, most disciplined and coordinated.

This, of course, is a small indicator, and although not one likely to move many votes it is symptomatic of the overall health of the party and its organisation. However, neither the postering nor the media coverage has reached anything on the scale it does here in the Republic during a general election or even as it did last June during the combined local and European elections.

In part this is because of the single seat constituencies and the first-past-the-post electoral system which is used for Westminster elections. Notwithstanding the efforts of some media commentators to talk up the closeness of some of the constituency races, the reality is that perhaps two-thirds of Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies are foregone conclusions. There are perhaps two constituencies which may be marginal across the nationalist-unionist divide and the balance are seen as marginal within the two blocs, that is between the SDLP and Sinn Féin, on one part, and Trimble's

UUP and Paisley's DUP on the other.

The main reason why the North is largely disengaged, however, is because so little is at stake and so little will change after it. One thing that may change is the personnel who govern Northern Ireland but, because of direct rule, the North's voters will have no bearing on that decision. Paul Murphy is probably going to a new cabinet position after this election perhaps as Secretary of State for Wales and leader of the House of Commons. However, it will be Tony Blair (or, in the unlikely event that Blair loses the election, Michael Howard) who will decide which Welsh, Scottish, or English MP will be the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

It will also be Tony Blair, and perhaps Gordon Brown, who will decide which of New Labour's low-fliers will be assigned responsibility for the other departments in the North.

Significant decisions are made every month by Northern Ireland Office ministers on a range of issues including, for example, decisions about the Eleven Plus exam and the structure of the health services. Bureaucrats are also conducting a public consultation on introducing a smoking ban in pubs and restaurants. However, if Northern politics continues on the current depressing course, the politicians there will be just onlookers on these issues.

The two constituencies which will attract most interest in the Republic will be Foyle and South Down where the veteran Eddie McGraddy is fighting to hold his seat in a tough battle with SF's Catriona Ruane. Most predict he will hold on.

In Foyle, the SDLP is hoping that Mark Durkan's decency and hard work will enable him to see off a challenge for John Hume's seat from SF's Mitchell McLaughlin.

ON the basis of the figures thrown up by the last couple of elections in Foyle Sinn Féin appears to have considerable momentum and the SDLP is likely to struggle to hold the seat.

However, both Foyle and South Down will be the testing ground for the one great unknown factors in this otherwise largely predictable election what, if any, impact the double political whammy of the Northern Bank raid and the Robert McCartney murder will have on Sinn Féin's share of the vote.

The Sinn Féin strategy in the face of these two problems has been rather ingenious. Gerry Adams statement (again) calling on the IRA to adopt a politics-only strategy was an electoral master stroke. Sounding sincere and peace-makingly earnest, Adams was accompanied by Sinn Féin's candidates live on cable news channels, and later in the headline spot on that night's news bulletins. Carlsberg don't do election campaign launches, but if they did it would look and sound like that. Dangling the prospect of ultimate sustainable peace in front of the electorate the party is hoping a renewed and enlarged mandate will cleanse it of the hue of criminality with which it says it has been smeared in recent months.

The McCartney murder is proving a more difficult issue for Sinn Féin whose counter strategy has been one of containment. Last week Sinn Féin stood down two of its candidates alleged to have been in the pub at the time of the McCartney killing. Otherwise the party is hoping that its support in the rest of the North will be indifferent to the sisters' campaign, at least until this election cycle is over.

In that they have been helped by the fact that coverage of the death and burial of Pope John Paul and the election of Pope Benedict XVI has inevitably pushed the McCartney story down the news agenda. Just in case a subtle rumour machine has been cranked up to bad-mouth the sisters in those areas where they might have most impact.

On the UK mainland the debate on issues like taxation, immigration and the Iraq war is intensifying as polling day approaches. Stubbornly, Northern Ireland's political parties, and their local media, are sticking to the issues which have dominated, and stagnated, their politics for decades. This election will again be a sectarian head-count between the nationalist and unionist blocs, and within those blocs it will be a battle about which of the political parties will best protect and represent their bloc's interests in the next phase of the apparently never ending round of negotiations which may or may not emerge after the elections and after the marching season.