The voters of Northern Ireland are used to being an impenetrable afterthought to most mainstream commentators in Britain. The general election has, however, delivered a series of enormous shocks, many of which are in danger of being overlooked. One of those is that Sinn Féin has seven Members of Parliament and is, for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, the largest party at Westminster. But that is at best nuanced, and at worst misleading. The deeper story is the crisis facing unionism.
Sinn Féin, founded in 1905 when A.J. Balfour was still prime minister, and for many years the political wing of the Provisional IRA, held the seven seats it won at the last general election. It fended off potential defeat in ultra-marginal Fermanagh and South Tyrone by a greater majority than expected, and has increased its share of the vote across Northern Ireland to 27 per cent. That, however, is slightly lower than its tally in the 2022 elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly, at which it won 29 per cent.
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