How Northern Ireland Blew a Chance to Escape Its Past

(Top photo: A Sinn Fein election poster. Photo: Chris Bethell)

It was easy to miss, given the circus in Washington and that video of some people having fun with a bagel, but last week Northern Ireland had an election for its assembly, and it was a pretty big deal.

Depending on who you listen to, the result was a revolutionary hinge point, a stunning defence of the near-status quo by a beleaguered first minister, a radical step on the way to Irish unity or a reversion to type as a sectarian headcount. In truth, it was all of the above, kind of, and in fine old Northern Irish tradition, all the wrong lessons will be learned.

As so often in Northern Ireland, the result was most of all a muddled mess: the country's voters took one look at their political class, and responded ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The unionist (and heavily religious) DUP was hugely discredited after its leader Arlene Foster – a woman who combines the warmth and likability of Richard Nixon with the crisis management skills of Richard Nixon – bungled her response to the "Cash for Ash" renewable energy subsidy screw-up, which saw farmers being paid to heat empty barns. This is likely to end up costing £500 million for naff all benefit. Sinn Fein, never a party squeamish about a dash of cynicism, manipulated Foster into a position where the only out for anybody was to bring down the power-sharing government less than a year after its last election.

That's more than enough for the DUP to get a bloody nose at the polls, right? Poor leadership, financial mismanagement, the whiff of corruption: this is the stuff holy democracy is supposed to punish without mercy.

Well, it did and and it didn't. The DUP did lose seats, but still have one seat more than Sinn Fein overall.

Which does beg the question: what exactly would Arlene Foster have to do to lose any more votes? The divide in Northern Ireland is baked into its political system as a compromise to displease everyone equally, and as long as the DUP shore up their base by scaring the horses with horror stories about Sinn Fein – and as long as Sinn Fein is wilfully blind to how provocative their commemoration of murderers is – it's going nowhere soon. As a mark of the bold steps toward the end of sectarianism taken in recent years, the last integrated school to be built opened in 2007.

It's fun to speculate on what really would shock Northern Ireland out of its tribal loyalties. Most votes are so predictable, a party could stand Joseph Kony, Ramzan Kadyrov or Wario and, provided they adopted the right view of transubstantiation and Irish-language road signage, they'd be elected. Arlene Foster is apparently today facing some calls to resign, and it's hard to see how she can stay and retain any credibility, but even after her self-kneecapping it's not clear who waits in the wings in the DUP to build a more conciliatory and positive message.

It's a message sorely needed on both sides. As well as issues of governance and accountability – Cash for Ash is just the latest in a series of financial bungles – Northern Ireland is, in Brexit, facing its biggest conundrum since at least 1998, and – it's fair to say – its founding in 1921. The constitutional question, which was thought to be parked for now, is back on the table in a big way.

The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic to its South is the only land border of the UK. If Brexit is really going to control immigration and the UK is really going to leave the customs union, it's hard to see how there couldn't be some kind of control on its crossings.

The border has become less and less significant, in particular after the Good Friday Agreement. But now, communities that have been living along an all-but-meaningless border could have a very meaningful barrier placed in between them. Tens of thousands of people cross it every day barely noticing, and border areas aren't separate economies in any meaningful way. Little England's vote to leave the EU, whether its voters like it or not, is going to have a radical effect in Northern Ireland.

Tellingly, the DUP was the only major Leave party in a region that voted 56 percent Remain. Now, Northern Ireland's biggest party publicly committed to a process that the majority of the population rejected. Back in June it even spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on a pro-Brexit wraparound advert for the Metro, a newspaper that does not run in Northern Ireland. Parties in Northern Ireland are allowed to accept anonymous donations. The revelation of this splurge fuelled concerns that Northern Ireland is being used by political donors as an "offshore secrecy haven".

There's a common euphemism in Northern Ireland: "The Past", which takes in all the maiming, bloodshed, fury and chaos of the Troubles. The Good Friday agreement was 19 years ago, almost two-thirds the length of the Troubles themselves. Northern Ireland has social problems to burn – where to start – and people with the youth or imagination to want a post-tribal society are frustrated at how Stormont continues to squabble over symbolism. We want to leave behind not only the violence, but the twats who can't get over it as well. They're both "the past".

There'll be other elections, and there'll be other politicians who preach progress but bang a sectarian drum when threatened. But this election felt different: the DUP, traditionally the biggest obstacle to any policy that feels remotely modern, was more vulnerable than ever. The people of Northern Ireland had their big chance to remove this blockage from their pipe, or at least grease its passage, and they blew it. As long as they can shore up their house of cards by playing the culture card, the current big parties aren't going anywhere, and their stranglehold will continue. The past may be gone, but the future is being stopped from being born.

Everybody in Northern Ireland deserves better.

@Lowrypalooza

Previously:

On the Campaign Trail with the Young People Battling Over Northern Ireland's Future