#For the first time in party’s history there will be no SDLP candidate on a general election ballot paper

[seachranaidhe]

Now The DUP's Nigel 'deputy' Dodds is really in trouble

Now The DUP’s Nigel ‘deputy’ Dodds is really in trouble

Conversation LucidTalk Retweeted Enda McClafferty @endamcclafferty BREAKING SDLP opting out of Westminister race in North Belfast. For the first time in party’s history there will be no SDLP candidate on a general election ballot paper. Also opting out of contest in East Belfast and North Down. All aimed at maximising pro remain vote. @BBCgmu 11:51 PM · Nov 3, 2019·Twitter for iPhone

@SJAMcBride

[votingforturkeysatchristmas]

Election Diary Day 5: 04/11/19

Today was a busy day. The big story has been the reaction to the non-pacts in Belfast, but it feels like there isn’t much to be said about it that hasn’t already been said by people much more qualified than me so this will be brief.

The SDLP appear (wisely) to have made all their moves in one go. It remains to be seen what the UUP will do in South Belfast, East Belfast, North Down and Fermanagh & South-Tyrone. Everyone else have shown their hands in South Belfast & East Belfast, which allows them to be fully informed when they decide which cards to play.

In F&ST the DUP have declared they will support Tom Elliott, which seems to have come as a surprise to the UUP who haven’t yet selected Elliott (at time of going to press). Elliott has a history of courting controversy and came up short in 2017, so they may well be tempted to change things up and run Rosemary Barton.

And in North Down the UUP are caught in the same holding pattern and the DUP and Alliance, with everyone waiting for Sylvia Hermon to declare her candidacy or otherwise.

But that’s enough about pacts. I think everyone has already had their fill of pacts (and VAR) this week.

In East Belfast Alliance have selected party leader Naomi Long. It would have been madness to do anything else. With the nationalist parties standing aside if both the DUP and UUP run candidate she probably represents the best chance Alliance have of taking a seat.  

In South Down the SDLP have selected Cllr Michael Savage, which is something of a surprise. I’ll cover this in more depth when i get to a constituency preview, but I had never heard of him until tonight.

Google tells me he is a councillor in Newry, which only adds to my sense of intrigue as Newry falls into Newry and Armagh rather than South Down. The clue is in the name with that one. The SDLP have 2 MLAs in South Down, Colin McGrath and Sinéad Bradley, and I think most observers expected one of them to be selected. That they have gone for an unknown suggests at first glance that the party have written off a constituency they won by 6000 votes as recently as 2015. It’s all a little strange.

Finally, today marked the death of legendary broadcaster Gay Byrne. He’ll be remembered north of the border for Peter Brooke singing on the evening of the Teebane bombing, and for the interview with Gerry Adams shortly after the IRA ceasefire in 1994. And of course the Toy Show. I look forward to allowing my kids to stay up later this month. It remains one of the highlights of my year.

But I’ll leave a link to the Adams interview below. Both the sound and picture are far from perfect, and whoever has uploaded it has done some editorialising with the title, but it was an extraordinary interview. There’s a clip of a young Ulster Unionist MLA in his old day job towards the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kS-4tpsXsU