Northern Ireland’s election started as a contest about Brexit and British and Irish identities, and finished by focusing on a big empty building that evoked comparisons to the Overlook hotel in The Shining.

The parliament building at Stormont, an estate outside Belfast, is an imposing structure in the Greek classical style filled with ornate ceilings, chandeliers and marbled halls.

Life drained from the building three years ago when a row between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) led to the collapse of power sharing, mothballing the assembly chamber and zombifying Northern Ireland’s politics.

The debacle haunted both parties on election night. The DUP lost two of its 10 MPs and saw its overall vote fall by 5.4 percentage points. Sinn Féin won a headline-grabbing victory in Belfast North where John Finucane toppled the DUP’s Nigel Dodds, but faltered everywhere else, losing a seat in Derry and seeing its overall vote drop by 6.7 percentage points.

It was punishment for Stormont’s paralysis amid crumbling public services, especially a crisis in healthcare, and it was Brexit blowback: retribution for DUP bungling and Sinn Féin irrelevance. Read more

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