Frank McCooke comes from a decidedly pro-British background in Northern Ireland. But in Thursday’s local elections – a test for the biggest Unionist party’s tough stance on post-Brexit trade deals – his vote is not in the bag.
“Just because I’m a trade unionist doesn’t mean I’ll blindly vote for a trade unionist,” said McCooke, owner of the busy Slemish Market Garden store in Ballymena, considered the heart of the region’s Protestant Bible belt.
The Democratic Unionist Party has paralyzed The Northern Ireland executive and assembly for a year to protest against trading terms which he says undermine the region’s place in the UK by subjecting it to EU rules.
He will fight on May 18 to remain the dominant party in local government by making the vote a proxy for his wider campaign. Meanwhile, the pro-Irish Unity Party sinn fein hopes to usurp the DUP to become the largest party in local government.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said his party’s ‘principled position’ had wrung concessions from London and Brussels under the Windsor frame.
The framework is a new trade deal struck by Rishi Sunak’s government that streamlines the original North Ireland protocol to reduce the impact of the customs border in the Irish Sea created by Brexit.
But Donaldson insisted more changes were needed and urged voters who “want to see the union maintained. . .[to]unite around the clear position that the DUP has taken”.
McCooke’s business suffered disruption as a result of the protocol. He spoke of the “clean hell” of not being able to buy seeds and plants from Britain, but he was pragmatic, buying them from the Republic of Ireland instead.
He is fed up with the DUP’s boycott of the Stormont assembly and power-sharing executive, which has coincided with rising costs of living and a severe budget crisis that is squeezing public services.
“As a businessman, I feel we are being held hostage,” he said. “This cannot go on – we need Stormont operational again or the country will go bankrupt. . . talk to people, there is definitely a change – we want to continue. Anything is better than this dead end.
“This is definitely a proxy election,” said David McCann, political speaker and associate editor of news site Slugger O’Toole. “I will look to see if trade unionism holds a majority in a majority of councils?”
Six of the 11 councils currently have Unionist majorities, four have Nationalist majorities and in one – Belfast – neither side has overall control.
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s incumbent first minister of Northern Ireland, has urged voters to “send a signal” to the DUP to end its veto over political institutions. His party became Stormont’s largest in the general election last May in an area where Catholics now outnumber Protestants.
After failing to increase its share of council seats in the last election in 2019, Sinn Féin is hoping to become the biggest party in local government.
“If they don’t become the biggest party, they will be disappointed,” McCann said. But he noted that the vote shares of Nationalists and Unionists fell in last year’s assembly elections. Meanwhile, the Alliance Party, which does not identify with either side, has made big gains which it will now seek to replicate locally.
A recent Lucid Talk poll revealed nearly two-thirds of Unionist voters overall supported the DUP’s hardline stance on Stormont. But the DUP, which lost eight seats in 2019, will be looking over its shoulder at the tougher traditional Unionist voice.
Its leader, Jim Allister, has urged voters to vote strongly against “the Windsor whitewash” which he says is dismantling the UK “in plain sight”.
London believes it can address unionists’ concerns and a minister saw a ‘window of opportunity’ to reclaim Stormont ahead of the season for traditional union marches in July.
But few in the region expect a move before September at the earliest. This pushed regional issues to the forefront of local campaigns.
At the Magnet Center for Young Adults in Newry, a largely nationalist town near the border, youth work co-ordinator Gemma McKeown said the lack of an executive meant official funding was only secure until the end. June.
“My generation has a pervasive sense of defeatism,” said William Callahan, 27, a college student and barista. “I hope there will be an awareness on the part of the electorate that we need. . . politicians who show up.
Shane Grimley, who plays guitar in Magnet’s recording studio, is 18 and could vote for the first time on Thursday. But he won’t. “It won’t make much difference if I did,” he shrugs.
David Coburn, a former soldier from Harryville, Ballymena, whose house is adorned with tributes to fallen soldiers and coronation and Union Jack flags, complained that the needs of the local community were being neglected.
Central and East Antrim Council, where Ballymena is located, had one of the lowest turnouts in 2019 but it will always stay at home.
“All parties should work together to create a better lifestyle instead of arguing over protocol,” said Coburn, who tore up his voter card.
He took another election leaflet out of his mailbox, without reading it. “One more for the trash,” he said.
Additional reporting by George Parker in London
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