Summary
Mark Carruthers is joined by David McCann, Suzanne Breen and Jayne McCormack to look back at what caused the big surprises in the general election.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Red Lines election wash-up. It's scarcely a week since we were tripping off to the polling stations with no idea of quite how the political landscape here and across the water would be changed by the process that Tories suffered the worst defeat in their history, Labour won a landslide, and here four seats changed hands. But there were other shifts and signs of movement that fed into |
| 0:22.5 | the narrative too, and all of that is what we're here to discuss today. With me, our three |
| 0:27.4 | Red Lines regulars, who played their part in teeing us up for the election, and now they get a |
| 0:31.9 | chance to reflect on what's just happened and on how much of it they actually saw coming. |
| 0:37.1 | Dr David McCann, our numbers man |
| 0:39.1 | throughout is here. The Belfast Telegraph's political editor, Suzanne Breen, is here, and we're |
| 0:43.9 | also joined by our political correspondent Jane McCormick. So welcome to all of you. Thank you for |
| 0:49.0 | joining us again. We have to start with what happened in North Antrim. A political earthquake |
| 0:54.0 | of seismic proportions was how the TUV leader Jim Alistair described his victory. |
| 0:59.9 | Suzanne, this was the very public de-fenestration of Ian Paisley |
| 1:04.4 | and nobody appeared to see it coming, least of all, Mr Paisley himself. |
| 1:08.8 | It was indeed. |
| 1:14.8 | I think that TUV people thought that could be very close, |
| 1:19.3 | that Jim Alistair would certainly eat in to Ian Paisley's vote. |
| 1:24.0 | In the Assembly elections, the two parties, the gap between them wasn't huge. |
| 1:31.4 | The DUP was on 26% in the Assembly election. The TUV was on 21%. And the big factor in this was Robin Swan switching from North Antrim to South Antrim. Ian Paisley joined Van |
| 1:38.8 | Morrison on the stage and sang that song. Infamously, Robin Swan is dangerous, very dangerous. Well, he certainly proved to be |
| 1:47.1 | this time by moving constituency because there was a lot of UUP voters who mightn't completely agree |
| 1:55.2 | with everything that Jim Alistair says but they respect him as a man of his word, as a man of integrity, as an honest |
| 2:02.5 | broker and they switched behind him and took him over the line against Ian Paisley. I think |
| 2:11.8 | Ian had suffered from not having a high TV or radio profile compared to the old days |
| 2:19.1 | whereas Jim's profile has remained sky high |
... |
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