All politics is local, or so it used to be said. But there was not much sign of that supposed neighbourhood granularity in England’s local elections on 4 May. Instead, a majority of English voters appear to have gone to the polls determined to register a national protest against Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government at Westminster. There has been even less deference to the parish pump in this week’s local elections in Northern Ireland. The 11 so-called super district councils, all proportionally elected, were up for grabs on Thursday for only the third time since the reform of local government in 2014. However, the Northern Ireland campaign has been overwhelmingly focused on a bigger political picture too, in this case the future of power sharing at Stormont and the wider tensions caused by Brexit.
None of this should imply that the Northern Ireland elections do not matter, despite an extremely lacklustre campaign. The results, which are due to be announced on Friday and Saturday, will at least produce local councils that are able to carry out their government functions in spite of the standoff at Stormont. Local democracy of that kind remains genuinely important. The results will also be studied, as ever, for what they say about the balances of political power within and between the two main traditions in Northern Ireland. They may also have something important to say about the health of the country’s third tradition, the non-aligned. This group may outpoll both unionists and nationalists this week, yet it is blocked by the Democratic Unionist party’s boycott of power sharing from putting its willingness to govern into practice.
There can be no denying that these elections have also been a proxy referendum on the long stalemate – now lasting for more than two years – caused by the DUP boycott. When the Windsor framework of amendments to the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol was agreed between Mr Sunak’s UK government and the European Union in February, the DUP refused to be stampeded into acceptance. This gave way to a tacit acceptance in London and Brussels that nothing would move on the issue until the local elections were out of the way. That point, however, has now been reached.
Those who hoped that the completion of the campaign would allow a page to be turned could be in for a disappointment. If the DUP puts in a commanding performance among unionist voters – which polls suggest is unlikely – the party will see the result as an endorsement of its hardline abstentionism and ramp up its demand for changes to the framework. But if the DUP does really badly, it will have little incentive to limp back into the power-sharing institutions in the shadow of Sinn Féin, which is predicted to be a big winner this week.
This is therefore a pivotal moment for the credibility of the power-sharing institutions created by the Good Friday agreement, whose quarter century brought Joe Biden and many others to Northern Ireland last month. It is also a pivotal moment in Mr Sunak’s tentative attempts to rebuild other post-Brexit relationships with the EU. The Windsor framework was a necessary down payment to facilitate other agreements, like solving the car industry crisis that has been so dramatically highlighted this week. Now this too is in doubt. The uncomfortable truth is that, whatever the results this week, the DUP has its hand around the throat not just of Northern Ireland, but of Britain’s relationship with Europe.
