Opinion

Predictable election can still spring some surprises

Tomorrow's council elections are unlikely to result in major changes to the political landscape but political correspondent John Manley finds there's no shortage of talking points...

Former Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan is among a number of ex-MPs and former MLAs standing in the council election. Picture by Stephen Hamilton/Press Eye
Former Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan is among a number of ex-MPs and former MLAs standing in the council election. Picture by Stephen Hamilton/Press Eye Former Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan is among a number of ex-MPs and former MLAs standing in the council election. Picture by Stephen Hamilton/Press Eye

A total of 819 candidates will tomorrow compete for 462 council seats as voters across Northern Ireland's 11 local government authorities go to the polls.

The majority of those elected will most likely be drawn from the north's five biggest parties, who last time around took more than 90 per cent of all seats.

It was the TUV, with a tally of 13 seats, which came in sixth place behind Alliance in 2014 and while Jim Allister's party will be keen to maintain its presence in unionist heartlands, this election will prove a greater challenge than five years ago.

It is fielding 32 candidates tomorrow, more than a third fewer than previously when many observers believe the TUV reached its high point.

In 2014, with Stormont's one-man opposition at the helm, it was almost singularly the voice of unionist dissent, a thorn in the side of the DUP, constantly criticising its acquiescence to the devolved institutions.

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With Stormont dormant, however, its armoury is effectively empty and there is little to distinguish it from a crowded unionist field.

Last time too, the local government election coincided with the European poll in which Mr Allister was fighting a high-profile campaign.

The 75,806 (12.1 per cent) first preference votes the TUV leader secured in his bid for seat in European Parliament, where he'd previously represented the DUP, dwarfed the 28,317 his party received in the council elections.

Unlike the DUP, Sinn Féin previously never faced a serious challenge from a party assembled from erstwhile comrades, but the arrival of Aontú signals a new, if modest, threat.

While leader Peadar Tóibín insists the fledgling party is not about a single issue, it is Aontú's anti-abortion stance that primarily distinguishes it from its bigger republican rival.

For a party that didn't exist little over six months ago, it has the potential to take at least a handful of seats, especially in rural, conservative areas west of the Bann and in also in Derry, where retired GP Anne McCloskey is its candidate.

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Former Sinn Féin MLA Francie Brolly, whose son Proinnsias is also running on a Aontú ticket, has an established profile that will perhaps help the party secure a seat in Causeway Coast and Glens Council.

Other candidates include sitting councillors Rosemary Shields (Fermanagh and Omagh) and Fergal Lennon (Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon), who defected earlier this year from the SDLP and Sinn Féin respectively. Former Fermanagh-South Tyrone MLA Gerry McHugh is also running for Aontú.

The one-time Sinn Féin agriculture spokesman is among at least 18 former assembly members and two MPs seeking election tomorrow.

Mr McHugh's former party colleague Barry McElduff, who resigned in January last year over the Kingsmill controversy, looks a likely contender to join Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, while Ulster Unionist Danny Kinahan, who lost his South Antrim Westminster seat in 2017, is hoping to take a seat on Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council.

Former Ulster Unionist MLAs seeking a seat in their respective council chambers are Harold McKee, Philip Smith and Jenny Palmer, while DUP counterparts who once graced Stormont's blue benches are Sydney Anderson, Adrian McQuillan, Ian McCrea, Fred Cobain and Stephen Moutray.

Ex-Sinn Fein MLAs keen to get elected are Willie Clarke, Catherine Nelson, Cathal Ó hOisín, Oliver McMullan and Ian Milne, while sitting assembly member Michaela Boyle is running for a council seat on Derry City and Strabane District Council, where veteran civil rights activist and former People Before Profit MLA Eamonn McCann also hopes to be elected.

Elsewhere, the SDLP's former South Down MLA Karen McKevitt is eyeing a seat on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and one-time Northern Ireland Unionist Party MLA Norman Boyd is standing as a TUV candidate in Antrim and Newtownabbey.

The fortunes of other candidates worth watching for various reasons include Helena Young, the first Alliance candidate to stand in Newry for more than two decades, and Sorcha McEnespy, who is running as an independent in Omagh, having angered the Fianna Fáil leadership with her unilateral election campaign launch last year.

Sinn Féin's 2017 North Belfast Westminster candidate John Finucane, whose lawyer father was murdered by loyalists in 1989, is hoping to secure a seat on the city council, as are three former SDLP representatives – Declan Boyle, Kate Mullan and Pat Convery – who resigned from the party in 2017 in a row over abortion.

Alliance's Stephen Donnelly aims to make history by becoming his party's first councillor west of the Bann, while the DUP's Alison Bennington hopes to be her party's first openly gay elected representative.