The ascent of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland politics sends shivers down the backs of Unionists. In particular, the appointment of a Sinn Fein First Minister for the first time in February 2024 led many Unionists to fear the worst. Nationalists North and South were greatly encouraged that Irish Unity was if not just around the corner, then at least a foregone conclusion. Moderate nationalists were hopeful that with the wind In their sails Irish Unity might be achieved peacefully through dialogue and ‘reconciliation’.
In fact, neither these hopes or fears have a sound basis. Electoral support for nationalism in Northern Ireland has risen greatly since Partition , but principally for demographic reasons as higher Catholic birth-rates swelled the almost wholly Catholic Nationalist population. However, birth-rates have been converging between the two communities, and the Nationalist share of total votes stabilised two decades ago. The latest polls show that the two main nationalist parties have 36% of the votes while the three unionist parties have 43%.
The recent dominance of Sinn Fein has been achieved not through expanding nationalist support but instead by Sinn Fein taking votes from the more moderate nationalist SDLP. This started after the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). It is a little noted effect of the GFA that the Agreement shredded support for the moderate parties in NI. Sinn Fein surged on the nationalist side and in response many unionists abandoned the moderate UUP in favour of Ian Paisley’s DUP. After the latter agreed to join in Government with Sinn Fein in 2007 it lost votes to the more radical Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). Most recently, when the DUP agreed to restart the Assembly and Executive despite the imposition of the NI Protocol/Windsor Framework, the erosion of votes to the TUV has become quite large.
The dominance of radical parties began with the GFA which many interpreted as proving that violence pays. When SDLP leader Mark Durcan complained to Tony Blair, soon after the GFA in 1998 that Sinn Fein received all of HMG’s attention with the SDLP largely ignored, Blair replied bluntly that ‘Sinn Fein had the guns and the SDLP did not’. Blair’s soft soap approach to Sinn Fein, even after the GFA was signed, included allowing Adams and McGuinness to bypass security checks when visiting Downing St, while other NI Party leaders had their bags searched, and allowing both to play with Blairs children in the garden at No. 10. Some of this one-sided treatment was no doubt viewed by HMG as necessary to persuade Sinn Fein to join a NI Assembly without retaining its arms, but the admiration of Sinn Fein seemed to go further. It can hardly have been necessary for Blair’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell, to invite Adams and McGuinness to his wedding in 2007. Given his fondness for Britain’s enemies, it was not much of a surprise that Powell (now Keir Starmer’s National Security Advisor) was a key player in Labour’s irrational 2024 decision to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos islands to the distant Republic of Mauritius.
Sinn Fein of course do everything within their power to accelerate the path to Irish Unity but Stormont Assembly rules mean that their hands are tied in many areas, and they have to be seen to make a success of running those public services which their ministers control. In some ways they are trapped into attempting to make a success of running a UK region. Their deadlines for achieving Irish Unity are quietly dropped when they pass without achievement. Some things have been possible through negotiation, including the spread of the Irish language in education, street signs and use in public documents despite the almost complete absence of native Irish speakers in Northern Ireland.
The current Stormont Executive has a Sinn Fein First Minister and DUP Deputy First Minister (effectively joint heads) plus three Sinn Fein and three unionist ministers and two Alliance ministers. This complex structure prevents any one group gaining control and periodically leads to the suspension of the Executive, often for years at the time. Sinn Fein are thus reduced to small moves, including disinformation, to make progress towards their key aim.
The most recent example is a small but significant deception in the presentation of economic data. Economic data is disseminated from the Department of the Economy which has a Sinn Fein Minister, the scientist Dr Caoimhe Archibald. In a routine press release released on January 15th the Department released data for annual growth up to the third quarter of 2025 for output, earnings and exports of goods with a congratulatory quote from the Minister noting that Northern Ireland had outperformed GB on all three variables. So far so normal. But on close examination not all of the figures covered the same period i.e. a year up to 2025 quarter three. With no explanation the exports figures alone instead covered a two-year period. These showed exports from Northern Ireland had grown at 5.7% (over two years) compared to 2.4% in GB (also over two years).
Working with economist Esmond Birnie an economist at Ulster University we discovered that the latest annual figure for exports from Northern Ireland was actually a decline of 0.9% which was less favourable than GB (-0.4%). We know of no precedent for switching period lengths in this way. Trying to think why the press release should do this, we speculated that the effect was to obscure the poor export performance in the latest year and that those compiling the press release had been leant on to do this. The most likely motive in our view was an attempt to avoid a suggestion that the Northern Ireland was not performing well under the Protocol/Windsor Framework which Sinn Fein support. We put these thoughts in a letter to the Belfast Newsletter newspaper and it was published on January 31st. This was followed by a request from the paper to the Department of Economy for a response. A reply was slow to arrive but eventually came in the form of a statement from the Sinn Fein minister which was also published in the paper on February 12th.
The statement said that “The reason for using the last two years is simple. The Windsor Framework came into effect in 2023 so we now have two years of data to draw upon. Two years of data is longer – and hence fairer -time period to assess export performance since the Windsor Framework came into effect”. This is completely disingenuous since the original press release was not an assessment of the Windsor Framework, or indeed of anything else. It was instead a routine data release describing the latest economic trends. The Minister implicitly admits that assessing the impact of the Windsor Framework was in fact an aim of what appeared to be a routine data release. She adds that she “was always of the view that Brexit would be economically disruptive. I have no hesitation in acknowledging that leaving the EU has been and is harmful to our economy.”
The statement then adds that in the latest year (to quarter 3 2025) Northern Ireland’s exports to the EU grew by 5.5% while those from GB fell by 2.7%. This is true and it is a mystery why this was not mentioned in the Press Release. The Statement then makes no reference to the huge 11% fall in Northern Ireland’s exports to non-EU countries over the same period. There is a suggestion in the Statement that 2025 was a difficult year for exports, due to Trump tariffs, but exports from GB grew by 1.8% in this ‘difficult’ period, including a 9.4% growth in Scottish exports. It may be that the 11% decline in NI’s Non-EU exports was a bounce-back from an exceptional 17% growth in the previous year and perhaps the Department could investigate this. Similarly, the relatively good performance in NI’s exports to the EU in 2025 may have been a recovery from a poor performance in 2024. Alternatively, the figures may indicate a diversion of trade towards the EU and away for other countries. There is obviously much more to be said about Northern Ireland’s exports and it is important the Department of the Economy makes full and transparent releases of data to enable people to make their own judgements.
Finally, the debate is not helped by ad hominem comments of the type made by the Minister who said in her Statement that “As zealous advocates of Brexit, [Gudgin and Birnie] dismissed widespread concerns that leaving the largest market in the world would cause significant economic damage. Dissatisfied with the failure of their campaign, they now turn their ire on the Windsor Framework.” This is simple mud-slinging. Readers of our letter will see that we made no attack on the Windsor Framework. The whole point was to criticise the Department for withholding information. Nor has there been any failure of Brexit for us to dismiss. Readers of this website will be aware of the large body of evidence showing almost no damage to output or productivity from Brexit. GDP in the UK has grown at a similar rate to France or Germany since 2016 and faster than Italy or Japan. It is true that some economists have been widely reported as claiming that the UK would have been the only G7 economy to grow as fast as the USA since 2016 in the absence of Brexit, but this is simply daft. Large fiscal deficits in the USA, combined with energy prices a fraction of those in the UK or EU, and now a massive boom in investment in AI, all mean that that the US economic growth has outpaced all other advanced economies over the Trump and Biden era. The Minister’s response thus compounds the original sin. The public needs accurate and transparent data and not Sinn Fein’s interpretation of what they would like the figures to be.
Dr Graham Gudgin CBE is co-editor of this website and was Special Advisor to the First Minister in Northern Ireland 1998-2002
