Opinion

Allison Morris: Where will politics take us in the next 21 years?

UNLESS you’ve been living in a bunker underground, you’ll know there are council elections on the way.

Posters belonging to hopeful candidates, some familiar faces, others in their first push into local politics, adorn lamp-posts in towns and cities across the north.

Local government elections have in the past been the most honest democratically, in that people vote for the person they know personally and who they believe will deliver on the mundane but essential services we all need; refuse collection, street cleaning, leisure services, planning – the man or woman who will answer the phone at all hours of the day or night to solve a local problem, the person who lives in the community they are representing.

No-one enters council politics to make their fortune and while we all attack politicians for their failure to deliver, and rightly so in some cases, we forget that there are those who truly see public service as a vocation.

However, elections in Northern Ireland have increasingly over the last 10 years become an unofficial census. A way of calculating changing demographics.

Following a pattern that also reflects the chaotic political times we live in, parties planned for one election this year but instead will have to fight two. If a snap general election is called add yet another trip to the polls to that number.

The inability of Theresa May’s government to deliver Brexit means that voters will be electing their local councillor and then just weeks later be back at the ballot box to elect a representative in Europe.

Having two, possibly three, elections in such close proximity penalises the smaller parties who are strapped for cash and simply don’t have the thousands of pounds needed to fight an effective election. You can see that by some of the party election broadcasts that range from big budget flashy productions to some that look like they were filmed on an iPhone.

Party coffers aside, we are now living in very different times. You’ll get bored hearing me say it but Brexit changed everything.

While in Britain the EU referendum has caused huge division, an increase in far-left and right politics and brought into the open the ugly face of racism in many communities who were previously living together, in Northern Ireland it has accelerated discussions around the future of the sovereignty of this island.

It slowed down the healing of the peace process, reemphasised the green and orange divide in society and has left border communities in a state of social and economic uncertainty. At times such as this the middle ground we hear so much about should have the ideal opportunity to step into the debate and provide an alternative. However, recent elections have shown the opposite. While increased voter turnout, be it in nationalist or unionist communities, should always be welcome and greater participation in democracy is a good thing, recent polls have shown voters are attracted to their own designated ‘tribes’ in greater numbers than ever before.

In two weeks from now all predictions suggest an increase in council representation for both Sinn Féin and the DUP.

Some people have been brave enough to put a number on that increase but events of the last few years have taught me not to make specific predictions.

With one party firmly Remain, the other hard line Brexiteers, this vote will be viewed by some as a mini border poll by others as a re-run of the EU referendum.

If one side or the other achieve dominance then there are a few weeks after that to whip up the fear of the non-voters and get them to the ballot box.

We are living in difficult but fascinating times politically.

The DUPs election broadcast mentions the word ‘delivery’ more than once and plays on the party’s recent dominance over politics at Westminster.

Sinn Féin’s broadcast is fronted by the party’s leadership, Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill, and in the main ignores that this is a council election to instead focus on the party’s ultimate aim of a referendum on unity.

Those two broadcasts give an idea of where politics are headed in Northern Ireland. As the Good Friday Agreement celebrates its 21st birthday this month, I don’t think the architects of that peace treaty ever foresaw recent developments.

There are opportunities in this new political landscape but there are also pitfalls and it remains to be seen going forward whether the two dominant parties with very different aims can ever work together again in a devolved setting.

Politics has changed at a pace in 21 years. I can only imagine where these troubling and uncertain times will take us in another 21.