Westminster deadlock thrusts Northern Irish parties into spotlight

Nothing sets Northern Ireland apart from the rest of the UK like a general election campaign. The biggest political story in Belfast for the past few weeks has been the resignation of Jim Wells, health minister in the region's devolved government, after he made controversial remarks about gay people bringing up children.

Yet as the prospect of a hung parliament at Westminster after May 7 comes into view, a low-key campaign across this often neglected corner of the UK has been brought to life. Suddenly the Northern Irish parties, used to being ignored in London, have been thrust into the unusual position of being spoken of as possible allies of a minority UK government.

This raises the question of whether any of the parties has the political heft and nationwide appeal to be comfortable, never mind natural, bedfellows for either the Conservative or Labour.

Northern Ireland has 18 MPs at Westminster. The five from Sinn Fein, the main Irish nationalist voice, do not take their seats and are irrelevant in the post-election bargaining. The Democratic Unionist party, the voice of Ulster loyalism, has eight MPs currently, while the centrists of the Social Democratic and Labour party and Alliance have three and one, respectively. There is also one independent.

The DUP is the fourth-largest party at Westminster measured by seats; it has two more than the Scottish National party. Its most obvious ally would be its erstwhile fellow unionists in the Tories. Peter Robinson, the DUP leader, told the BBC recently that the party was ready to work with either Labour or the Tories, "as we have in the past".

However, Nigel Dobbs, the party's deputy leader and senior Westminster MP, has slammed the Conservatives' plans for English devolution after the election, and there are sharp differences between them on welfare reform. It is the issue that also divides the SDLP from the Tories. The party, once the voice of constitutional Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland's most troubled years from the 1960s to the early 1990s, is campaigning on the slogan "Prosperity not Austerity".

Political analysts say Mr Wells's resignation - he said he was stepping down to care for his wife, who is seriously ill - came at a bad time for the DUP. The party is unashamedly socially conservative, which suggests it would not be a natural ally for either David Cameron or Ed Miliband, both of whom are avowedly socially liberal on issues such as gay marriage. The other issue that repels many people in Britain, including in Scotland, is the party's hardline unionist ideology, which is essentially Protestant and triumphalist.

Professor Cathy Gormley-Heenan, of Ulster University, says speculation about the DUP as kingmakers after May 7 looks misplaced. "The really important question is whether the Tories or Labour will want to be seen to rely on the DUP, because it could leave either of them very red-faced about who their bedfellows are," she says. The DUP, she argues, is radically different to the Ulster Unionist party, the long-time voice of mainstream unionism until it was displaced by its more rightwing rival in successive elections.

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Graham Walker, professor of political history at Queen's University in Belfast, says the best option for the DUP may be to swing towards Labour. He says it is "the only party that holds out the prospect of strengthening the union in the long term".

But he says the DUP's unionism may be "too toxic" for it to become an effective advocate for the union at Westminster. "Playing on the idea of an ethnic union plays well here [in Northern Ireland] but not outside of here," he says.

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