‘Let no one pretend that we don’t speak for the unionists of Northern Ireland’ said Nigel Dodds to the House of Commons in March, convincing himself. There may have been a time when the DUP spoke for all unionists everywhere. That time is not now. The DUP of course represent unionists, but they are a long way off representing the unionists of Northern Ireland. The rub has historically been that they represent fewer unionists than vote for them even, let alone those who vote for other parties. We all know the grudging DUP voter who’ll do their electoral duty for lack of better options, even if they won’t be terribly happy about it. The DUP know this, and so a lot of their campaigning energy goes into intimidating and so winning over the malcontent unionist demographic: If you don’t vote for us, you’d better start learning Irish; vote for us to make sure we don’t get one of them as First Minister; vote for Mike [Nesbitt] and you’ll end up with Martin [McGuinness].

Change is on the unionist breeze. Now that Brexit has given birth to a new set of clashing political identities (Brexiteer vs Remainer), I find the two unionist parties to be increasingly on the far side of the identity-chasm from a significant portion of the unionist electorate.

Consider: unionists who are pro-European and anti-Brexit can’t vote for a unionist party if they want these views represented. Likewise for unionists who are socially liberal, who want same-sex marriage and abortion reform. And unionists who want to share power, who want to see active participation in successful, consensual governance rather than a perpetual power struggle – these unionists will be hard pressed to find a unionist party who embodies the spirit of cross-community cooperation.

I’m not saying all unionists want these things. While being pro-Assembly-restoration, pro-European, pro-same sex marriage and pro-abortion reform are majority positions in Northern Ireland, it’s probably not true that these are all majority positions among unionists. For instance, we know that ~65% of unionists voted to leave the European Union in the referendum. My point is that ~35% didn’t, that there is a significant portion of the unionist demographic going unserved, unrepresented and unsatisfied.

And as the DUP and the UUP come more and more to represent the antithesis of all these things, especially now that Remain vs Leave has become such a point of passionate contention, I think soft unionists will find themselves feeling more and more uneasy at the prospect of voting for the unionist parties, and will find themselves thinking twice about depositing a carefree ‘123 DUP’ in the ballot box.

The DUP brand is hard-heartedness, no compromise, no surrender. They are, after all, the party of ‘Ulster says no’. Their tactic is to sit still and let the world burn around them until they get what they want. And what they want is Brexit, no change for same-sex marriage, no change for abortion, and a devolved government where they have the bulk of the power, as before. Arlene Foster apparently considers power sharing to be a zero-sum game, with a prime concern of the current set of talks being about preventing ‘a 5-0 situation for Sinn Féin’.

As for the UUP, they are a spent force. Robin Swann says he’s secure in his electoral niche, content that people will always vote for the UUP because they aren’t the DUP, even if they’re beginning to act like them. Their campaign strategy for the EU Parliament elections seemed to be to vacillate between the paranoid insistence that ‘Actually everything is fine, nothing is wrong, thanks for asking’ and the yet more paranoid insistence that ‘There is an anti-unionist conspiracy set on take away the seat that is rightfully ours’. Only time will tell if their attitude will change now that they’ve suffered such an embarrassing reversal of fortune in the two most recent elections. At this point in time, it doesn’t seem likely. See for instance Robin Swann informing us, in the dullest story of the election, that he has now considered standing down as leader – the problem is just that nobody had asked him to yet, and so he concludes (presumably with a sigh), ‘I am the leader of the UUP’. This is, to my regret, what the UUP looks like at the minute – a party with no better ideas, casting around with furrowed brow, wondering mildly why people aren’t voting for them like they used to.

Unionists want better, don’t they?

We Ulster Protestants are peculiar things. Stubbornness is our native language. Staunchness is our primary mode of being. We do not easily recant, or surrender. Our ancestors maintained the venerable tradition of defiance – against anything that might threaten the Protestantism and the Unionism that made them what they were. This is our cultural heritage – it is valuable; it is problematic. And so it is that many of us simply will not entertain voting for a party that doesn’t have a ‘U’ in its acronym, even if our estimation of the parties that do hits rock bottom.

It remains the case that in spite of how strongly people feel about their newfound ‘Remainer’ status, Unionism/Nationalism is the identity-vector that trumps all identity-vectors. So even though voting Alliance might seem like the obvious fix for soft unionists – since they’re socially liberal and pro-European and seem more and more like viable players in the game of Stormont – unionists will continue to find it hard to vote for them because they’re ‘sitting on the fence’ when it comes to the Union. We’ve all been taught to consider the other identities and beliefs we hold as secondary when we enter the polling station. And so it is that we have tolerated the choice set before us for this long, a choice between being represented by extremists or by chumps. So it is that we are afflicted by the common malady: an allergy to the DUP, without a viable unionist alternative.

That said, the bleed of unionists to Alliance seems more like a steady flow with each passing election.

Consider the UUP’s performance in the EU elections. For starters, they received considerably fewer first-preference votes than they did in any recent election (just 9.3%). Compare that with their first-preference take in any recent election: whether it’s the 2014 EU elections (13.3%), or the 2019 local elections (14.1%), the 2014 local elections (16.1%), or the 2017 Assembly elections (12.9%). The story of the UUP is now a story of decline.

Meanwhile Alliance’s vote has been surging dramatically upward, (first-preferences rose from 7% to 18.5% across the two most recent EU elections; 6.7% to 11.5% in the locals).

But consider also how few UUP voters transferred to Alliance this time: ~12.7%, compared with ~51.4% to the DUP and ~28.6% to the TUV.

The UUP’s decline has been (part of) Alliance’s gain, and to me this speaks of an increasing number of unionists finding in Alliance the moderate party they’re looking for, leaving behind in the UUP a tighter core of unionists who are unwilling to transfer beyond the ‘unionist family’.

So perhaps the thing is now happening; perhaps soft unionists are now reaching that critical mass at which we can no longer stand to vote for the unionist parties. As for me, I remain convinced that many will continue to not do so – many will continue to hope for better from the unionist parties, and will not bring themselves to leave them. But if more soft unionists depart for Alliance, how easy will they find it to return to the unionist parties who hold their constitutional positions (along with all their other positions) so tightly? How easy will they find it to return to the unionist parties for whom the standard liberal policies are anathema, and an affront?

So here’s the message, I think: if Unionism won’t provide for soft unionists, it’s going to lose them. Lose them to Alliance, yes – that’s happening now. But also, perhaps, Unionism might start to lose them altogether.

Brexit makes the Union look ugly

As discussed, there’s been plenty of reason for unionists to fall out of love with the unionist parties recently. The DUP have roundly failed to provide for or even acknowledge the growing number of unionists who don’t want Brexit, who are convinced that a ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic for their livelihoods and industries. The DUP have gone so far as to insult these, their constituents and electorate, calling them ‘puppets of the Northern Ireland Office’. They’ve taken their intransigence act on the road, and we’ve watched their ugly game of brinksmanship play out and bring us to the slow grinding halt known as the present.

And we’ve had plenty of opportunity to become thoroughly disenfranchised with the United Kingdom. We are subjected to a parade of English nationalists on the evening news who variously ignore Northern Ireland completely, patronise us with simplistic solutions to our complex problems, or jeopardise our hard-won peace with careless promises. We watch a government which unashamedly puts the ideological good of Brexit above the peace, livelihood and wellbeing of both countries on our island. We’ve watched from between our fingers as English politicians fail to understand even basic facts about us, scupper Stormont by dealing with the DUP to keep themselves in power and make deals and promises to create the illusion of solutions, rather than actually working to secure a real one.

This all goes on, plenty of noise and precious little motion, effecting unwitting results. I’ve noticed slow change among my peers – particularly among young people, university people, Internet people, liberal people and (though not exclusively) irreligious people – these ones who are watching, aghast. We are not holding ourselves as far apart from the Republic as we are supposed to; we are becoming less suspicious of, and more attracted to, Irishness and Nationalism and Catholicism. And, frankly, why not? Many of us ceasefire-generation, unionist-background, Ulster-Protestant people have grown up sheltered from the old allegiances, have made friends with different sorts of people at our universities, have resonated sparingly with the idea of a staunchly Protestant Ulster, and are unthreatened by the familiarly liberal, increasingly irreligious state to the South. For all its richness and merit, our cultural/religious tradition can be hard and narrow, and perhaps people are now reacting against it – towards something that seems more liberal, more expansive, more romantic, more optimistic. Add to this that the nationalist parties corner the market on liberal politics, and on anti-Brexit politics, and that the Irish government seems far more concerned with representing us these days than does the British, and the argument for a United Ireland starts to gain traction.

And now Claire Sugden beats me to the punch, starting the ball rolling on the idea of a New Unionist Party (TM). Perhaps what Unionism now requires is a unionist version of the SDLP, for whom maintenance of the Union is perhaps an ultimate concern, but for whom it doesn’t surpass the maintenance and renovation of Northern Ireland here and now. Perhaps this would be too uncomfortable for the unionist mindset. But it is, after all, the fundamental message of Alliance – and learning from Alliance has become a pressing necessity for our unionist parties.

I think the days are ending when the DUP and the UUP can take our vote for granted. If they want to keep the unionist demographic intact, and unionist, they’re going to have to start treating it with a bit more care.