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Red Lines

#LE23 - Unionists

Red Lines

BBC

Government

4.674 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mark Caruthers profiles the issues within unionism with Dr David McCann, Sam McBride and Gareth Gordon ahead of the local government election.

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's less than a month to the forthcoming local council election, and in this week's red lines, we're looking at the challenges facing unionism on May the 18th.

0:08.9

In the next couple of weeks, we'll discuss the issues confronting nationalism and what we might call the other parties.

0:14.1

But today we'll look in some detail at how the DUP, the Ulster Unionists and the TUV could fare in an election.

0:25.3

It'll fill 462 seats across 11 council areas.

0:33.2

And with me, to crunch the numbers and highlight some of the most interesting battlegrounds are Dr David McCann, the deputy editor of Slugger O'Toole,

0:39.6

the Northern Ireland editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Independent Sam McBride and our political correspondent, Gareth Gordon.

0:41.3

Welcome to all of you, David.

0:45.2

What are the issues facing unionism in this election, would you say?

0:47.3

Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating battle at this time.

0:51.3

So the DEP are really fighting a rearguard action to stay as the largest party of local government. This is a spot they've held since 2005 and they are looking

0:57.0

to not lose that to Sinn Féin. They're currently 17 seats ahead of Sinn Féin at local government level,

1:02.6

but since 2011, the DEP has been trending down in seats. They lost 15 notional seats when

1:07.9

the supercouncils were created in 2014. They lost a further eight in 2019.

1:12.3

And obviously, after the recent Assembly election, they're going to want to make sure that they don't lose further ground as well.

1:19.0

Then another issue for another unionist party is the Ulster Unionists.

1:22.0

They're going to make sure they don't want to fall behind the Alliance Party and some key councils.

1:25.6

So places like Lisburn, Castle, Ray, and

1:29.6

East and Mid-Neast Antrim as well, those type of councils.

1:33.6

And then finally, the TUV, they had an absolute disaster of an election in 2019.

1:38.2

They were wiped out in Clauseway, Coast and Glens, Lisburn, Antrim, Newton Abbey, and

1:41.8

Belfast, so the key question is can they make inroads back

1:44.8

outside of their heartland of mid-and-east Antrim? So that's kind of the lay of the land of unionism.

...

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