Nationalist party Sinn Féin gained a “tsunami” of votes to clinch a better than expected victory in council elections in Northern Ireland, which were widely seen as a verdict on the region’s post-Brexit stalemate.
After the count finished early on Sunday morning, Sinn Féin had secured control of six of the 11 councils, cementing its place as the region’s largest party. It beat projections to take 144 of the 462 council seats, an increase of 39 on the last elections in 2019.
The Democratic Unionist party, which had controlled six councils previously, was beaten into second place, repeating the historic reverse of last year’s elections to the Stormont regional assembly.
The Alliance party, which identifies as neither unionist nor nationalist in the deeply divided region, secured third place with 67 councillors after what its leader Naomi Long described as “almost a tsunami of votes” for Sinn Féin, the Irish pro-unity party.
Although some of the seats gained by Sinn Féin were in traditionally staunchly unionist areas where it had never won before, analysts said the result was far from a washout for the DUP.
“This is a very good result for the DUP,” Jon Tonge, politics professor at the University of Liverpool told BBC Northern Ireland.
The largest pro-UK grouping has been boycotting the region’s power-sharing government and assembly at Stormont for more than a year demanding more concessions concerning Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading rules with mainland Britain and had hoped to turn the council elections into a proxy vote to back its campaign.
The DUP’s supporters did not defect en masse to the harder-line Traditional Unionist Voice party to which it had lost support at the Stormont elections last year and it held all of its 122 seats albeit with no gains.
Jonathan Buckley, a DUP legislator, told BBC Northern Ireland it had been a “very solid election” for his party. He accused Chris Heaton-Harris, the UK’s Northern Ireland secretary of “bullying” to try to get it to return to Stormont, saying other parties had “ganged up” on it.
Analysts said the result left a way open for the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to take his party back into the Stormont institutions, a move some analysts believe could happen after the traditional unionist marching season in July.
“If [Donaldson] does go back to Stormont this autumn . . . he won’t be going back with his tail between his legs because, frankly, the DUP’s vote has held up very, very well,” Tonge said.
The DUP objects to the customs border imposed by Brexit in the Irish Sea and says a revised deal, known as the Windsor framework, agreed between London and the EU earlier this year to streamline trading rules does not go far enough in guaranteeing the region’s place in the UK and its internal market.
It has yet to spell out what, precisely, would entice it back to Stormont but the UK government has promised legislation to copper-fasten Northern Ireland’s place within the UK and is widely expected to provide some financial incentive as well. “This has strengthened Jeffrey’s hand,” said Alex Kane, a former communications director for the smaller Ulster Unionist party.
But he warned the clock was ticking on the DUP to lift the boycott with a big US investment conference due to take place in Belfast in September. “If unionists aren’t back in [Stormont] the investors aren’t coming over.”
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s first-minister-in-waiting, called over the weekend for ministers from the UK and Republic of Ireland to meet “as a matter of urgency” to help restore the power-sharing institutions. London and Dublin have said a meeting is planned within weeks.
Despite what O’Neill called a “momentous” victory, her party will face a number of challenges should power-sharing be restored, delivering on policy commitments at a time when Northern Ireland is battling unprecedented financial pain.
The civil servants who are running Stormont in the absence of a government have warned of further cuts that could cause irreversible harm to the health service, which has the longest waiting lists in the UK, as well as other public services, such as education.
Sinn Féin victory at the weekend has cemented its place as the region’s largest party but the local elections results have not secured it backing for its goal of a referendum on a united Ireland within a decade.
Candidates backing Irish reunification won 40.5 per cent of the vote versus 53.1 per cent for those wanting to remain British. Nevertheless, in terms of seats it was much closer with 186 councillors who identified as unionists returned compared with 185 identifying as nationalist, according to Professor Duncan Morrow, a politics lecturer at Ulster University.
“You can’t equate a vote for a Sinn Féin with a united Ireland — there was no talk of a united Ireland in this campaign,” said Deirdre Heenan, a professor of social policy at Ulster University.
“What this election has really confirmed is that Northern Ireland is now a three-party state.”
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