Northern Ireland Votes: Newry and Armagh

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Northern Irish constituency preview, what with last week’s business, so now seems a good time for Newry and Armagh. Newry and Armagh covers almost all of County Armagh. It is unique in that it contains two cities, albeit cities that are, by British standards, very small. The two are, unsurprisingly, Newry (population: 27,430 in 2001) and Armagh (14,300), the least populated city in all of Ireland. The seat is on the South of Northern Ireland, and sits in-between Fermanagh and South Tyrone and South Down. Like both those seats it is Catholic dominated, with about 63-67% of the seat Catholic. The area is stereotyped as being highly deprived, but the constituency has been improving in recent years. Nonetheless there are still some deep pockets of poverty in the constituency, especially in Newry and the south of the seat. The North/South poverty divide in the seat is reflected by a North/South Protestant/Catholic divide. No Unionist has even attempted to win a council seat in the South of the constituency since 1981. The constituency is also very segregated in parts. It will surprise no one, based on what I just said, that the seat has been Sinn Fein held at a Westminster level since 2001. The 2010 result then.

Candidate	Party	Vote	Change
Conor Murphy	Sinn Fein	42.0%	+0.6%
Dominic Bradley	SDLP	23.4%	-1.7%
Danny Kennedy	UUP/Con	19.1%	+5.2%
William Irwin	DUP	12.8%	-5.5%
William Frazer	Independent (Unionist)	1.5%	+1.5%
Andrew Muir	Alliance	1.2%	+1.2%

A fairly uncompetitive Sinn Fein seat then really. One surprising sight though is the vision of Danny Kennedy of the UUP defeating William Irwin of the DUP. In fact this is the only constituency in Northern Ireland where the UUP beat the DUP in 2010. The strong result for Kennedy, a local MLA, may represent a strong personal vote. 2007 then:

MLA	Party	First Pref	Round Elected
Conor Murphy	Sinn Fein	15.0%	1
Cathal Boylan	Sinn Fein	14.3%	1
Danny Kennedy	UUP	13.1%	5
William Irwin	DUP	12.9%	5
Mickey Brady	Sinn Fein	12.8%	4
Dominic Bradley	SDLP	10.7%	7

Best Losers	Party	First Pref	Round Eliminated
Sharon Haughey	SDLP	9.1%	7
Paul Berry	Independent (ex-DUP)	4.7%	4
Davy Hyland	Independent (ex-Sinn Fein)	4.4%	3

Overall Result

Party	Vote	Seats
Sinn Fein	42.1%	3
SDLP	19.8%	1
UUP	13.1%	1
DUP	12.9%	1
Green Party	1.2%	0
Alliance	0.6%	0

The Incumbents

Conor Murphy (Sinn Fein) is this seat’s MP, and the top polling MLA from 2010. He is also Minister for Regional Development. He was also the Sinn Fein’s floor leader (leader of the Assembly party) before his Ministry, in which role he became the first Sinn Fein MP to visit the Conservative Party conference in 2005. A former IRA member, he then proceeded to cause controversy by refusing to admit regret for the Brighton Hotel bombing, which targeted Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet, and killed five people and injured 31 others (including Norman Tebbit, and his wife, who was permanently disabled). He was also propelled into the limelight (perhaps not completely positively) with the water crisis this past winter, with water falling under his department’s remit. As a prominent MLA and MP for the seat Murphy can be assured of re-election.

Cathal Boylan (Sinn Fein) is the second Sinn Fein MLA for this seat. A former local councillor Boylan was leader of the Sinn Fein group on Armagh City and District council. He has a strong local base in Keady, where he has lived for his entire life. Having been the second Sinn Fein MLA to be elected on the first round in 2007, he should be safe.

Danny Kennedy (UUP) is, as of the 27^th October 2010, the Employment and Learning Minister on the Executive. Thereby making him the second UUP Minister (the first is Michael McGimpsey, Minister for Health). A MLA since 1998, Kennedy has served as the UUP’s deputy leader, and as chair of the First and Deputy First Ministry Committee. In the latter role he won the 2008 Slugger Award for ‘Best Committee Chair’. The fact that, as the party’s Westminster candidate, Kennedy gained 5.2% of the vote, making this the only constituency where the UUP beat the DUP, only serves to underline that he is either talented or has a decent organisation behind him. Either way, Kennedy should be safe. Indeed, if he repeats his 2010 score he may even top the poll.

William Irwin (DUP) is a local farmer turned politician. A councillor since 2002, and a MLA since 2007, Irwin has served as Mayor on Armagh City Council. While not a particularly prominent MLA, as far as I can tell, Irwin has a clear local base and the DUP has enough support to keep in power. In 2007 the DUP lost votes to a former DUP MLA, Paul Berry, who was running as an independent after being booted out of the party following a gay sex scandal (for the record, Berry denies being homosexual, but this is the party which once launched a campaign entitled ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’). He was thus elected when Berry was eliminated. This time, Irwin may fall short of quota again, but as he is the sole DUP candidate and Kennedy is the sole UUP candidate he will likely be elected on Kennedy’s transfers whenever he is elected. Should be an easy DUP hold, really.

Mickey Brady (Sinn Fein) is the final Sinn Fein MLA for this seat. Brady is a former member of the Worker’s Party, the descendant of ‘Official Sinn Fein’ the other half of the 1971 split in Sinn Fein. The Worker’s Party gradually evolved into a sort of Irish Republican Marxist-Leninist party, hence the name change. Brady’s profile on the Sinn Fein website bigs up his left-wing credentials a lot which suggests to me that Brady is an attempt by Sinn Fein to expand their base slightly. From what I can tell he also seems to have something of a local base in Ballybot in Newry, where he was born. Of the MLAs in Newry and Armagh Brady is probably the least safe, but if I were putting money on it I would certainly back Brady.

Dominic Bradley (SDLP) is this seat’s sole SDLP MLA. An MLA since 2003 Dominic Bradley speaks Gaelic, a rarity in SDLP MLAs (it tends to be more common with Sinn Fein MLAs). Bradley has a long history in the SDLP, serving as director of elections for Seamus Mallon, this seat’s former MP, as Education and the Irish language, and as a negotiator for the party with the UK and Irish governments. While Bradley was the last MLA elected in 2007 this obscures the fact that the SDLP actually got the second highest number of votes. If Bradley is unseated, it will only be because he falls behind a member of his own party, which, being as prominent as he is, he shouldn’t.

The Challengers

The SDLP is hoping to take one of the Sinn Fein seats (likely Brady’s as the weakest) but it has a difficult mountain to climb to do so. They’ve selected Thomas O’Hanlon, an Armagh City councillor, who served as the city’s youngest ever Mayor last year. A strong candidate, O’Hanlon is prominent in the party and is the party’s Culture and Sport spokesman. Despite this the SDLP will need a big swing from Sinn Fein to take the seat, and given that in 2010 there was actually a slight swing away from them one suspects this will be difficult at least. O'Hanlon's best chance at winning a seat is probably to gain more votes than Dominic Bradley and thus unseat his SDLP colleague (this is the best part of STV, only in STV can you get these sorts of scenarios). This is a tough ask, however, considering that Bradley has the advantage of incumbency.

Incidentally UKIP have also announced they are standing a candidate here, Robert Woods. Given the fact that the seat is strongly nationalist I have no idea why they chose this as one of the six seats for their intervention into Northern Irish politics. My guess is that they are trying to drag enough votes from the Unionists to unseat Irwin and take that seat. That strikes me as highly unlikely however, and I suspect they will be walking away from Newry and Armagh with the equivalent of the wooden spoon.