The nationalist Catholic party Sinn Féin has become the largest party in Northern Ireland for the first time ever. Report that British media Saturday night† While not all votes from Thursday’s local elections have yet been counted, it is clear that Sinn Féin will win 27 seats in the Assembly of Northern Ireland.
The conservative Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the largest party in the country since 2003, has 24 seats. With the votes that still have to be counted, the DUP can gain a maximum of one seat. Unlike the nationalist Sinn Féin, the DUP wants to remain as closely linked to the United Kingdom as possible.
The Catholic party was once the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which wanted to make the island independent from London by force and attacks. With elections this week, a nationalist party gains a majority in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time since Northern Ireland was founded in 1921. Before that, unionist parties were always the largest.
Symbolic
Sinn Féin’s vice president in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, has responded enthusiastically to her party’s win, calling it “historic elections”. “Elections of real change,” said O’Neill. The result means Sinn Féin can supply Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister and DUP the Deputy Prime Minister, rather than the other way around. That had been the situation since 1998, when the Good Friday Agreement laid down how the unionists and nationalists should divide power.
Legally there is no difference between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister – they have equal power – but the change is of symbolic value. The DUP deliberately left open during the election campaign whether it would cooperate in a government with Sinn Féin as the largest party.