One potent force is emerging from the torpid dispute over Northern Ireland between the U.K. and European Union, and the potential consequences could redraw the map more dramatically than Brexit.
Sinn Fein, whose ultimate goal is a united Ireland and the end of British rule, is leading the polls ahead of critical elections to Belfast’s power-sharing assembly on May 5 after pro-U.K. unionist parties lost ground since the divorce from the EU. It puts Sinn Fein on course to take the post of first minister for the first time just as the party’s popularity has also swelled in the Republic of Ireland because of discontent over the economy.
The seemingly inexorable rise of a group that was linked with the sectarian violence that blighted Northern Ireland for three decades threatens to upend the political order in ways that would reverberate worldwide.
