By this time next week, the election will be over bar the counting.
Pretty well every poll in Northern Ireland is billed as make-or-break; so I can say, with a fair degree of certainty, that this election is the most important ever – until the next one.
Although the DUP has tried to make this poll about Irish unity, the truth is that it’s not. But scaring unionists has been its go-to trick since its foundation. The difference this time is that there is a credible unionist voice calling them out.
I am not stupid enough to predict whether Doug Beattie’s decision to challenge the DUP directly on this hackneyed scare tactic will work for the UUP this time round. But he deserves credit for bringing to unionist electoral politics a fresh approach and a more constructive tone.
Eyes will also be on the performance of Jim Allister. His star sign is Aries, the ram, who (the internet tells me) “will never do something just because everyone else is doing it”. Maybe there is something in this astrology stuff after all.
“Rams may also have a short fuse,” I understand.
Well, Allister has been on a short fuse since I was a cub reporter in east Antrim in the early 1980s. He was then a member of Newtownabbey Borough Council and an unsuccessful candidate in the 1983 general election.
Allister put all his political guile into winning East Antrim. But he lost to Roy Beggs senior whose catchy campaign slogan, “Use your legs and vote for Beggs”, appealed to voters more.
Allister’s stock in trade then, as now, was to try and secure better coverage by complaining that his voice was being excluded.
Nonsense of course. If anyone has been gifted a greater profile than he deserves, it’s Allister.
One of my more surreal moments as a young journalist was being accused by him of being the voice of the UUP. Outraged at a report, he threatened to descend on the Carrickfergus Advertiser and East Antrim Gazette with a delegation of five, led by party leader Ian Paisley.
I said they would be welcome, but they should bring some chairs because we didn’t have enough for them in our small office. He didn’t show.
Back then he was a Paisley stalwart – but the DUP drifted from him; so far it seems, that this week Paul Givan claimed it was a ‘progressive’ party.
Unlike today’s ‘Progressive Paisleyites’, however, Allister has always been rooted in the same place – on the wrong side of the argument, and the wrong side of history.
You have to give him some credit though for wrong-footing the DUP and its inept leader. Rather than fighting his own campaign, Donaldson has been forced to kow-tow to Allister’s anti-protocol agenda – looking foolish with it.
Every time Donaldson stands on a platform attacking the protocol, he reminds voters that his party brought it into being.
The truth is that this election is not about the protocol, and it’s not about a British or Irish union. That is for another day, and that day will come.
This is an election about who is best placed to secure the health, education and well-being of every man, woman and child here.
In the middle of a global pandemic, and the biggest economic challenge since the Great Depression, the votes cast will determine whether we are in for another futile fight over the constitution, or whether we want to see constructive politics which secure peace and stability – and offer hope to the hungry and dispossessed in every constituency. For some it will be a matter of life or death.
To that end, two things are crucial this coming week. The first is to make sure you exercise your democratic right to vote. May 5 is when power passes – fleetingly – into the electorate’s hands. If you don’t vote, don’t complain about the result.
The second thing is to use the single transferable voting system strategically to maximise your vote’s power.
In our bipolar world, the temptation for people is to vote only for those they can ‘thole’ (to use a great Ulster-Scots word).
But by voting right down the ballot, your vote has the power to shape the membership of the next assembly across all political parties. And that is an awesome power.
The point at which you stop on the ballot paper, is the point where you cease to have any control over the outcome of the full election.
The beauty of the STV system is that it allows you to vote against people as well as for them. Use that democratic right too. Use it wisely.
