Ireland, not Scotland, will be the trendsetter with general elections looming in Britain and the Irish Republic in 2015, This is not to marginalise the importance of the Scottish independence referendum, which will either witness a disintegration of the United Kingdom or a redrafting of the Act of Union.
With the Liberal Democrats in meltdown and UKIP on the rise, David Cameron needs to line up a new coalition partner if there is another hung parliament.
A Cameron/Nigel Farage pact is fantasy. Cameron has one option: cosy up to the Democratic Unionists, who are expected to return up to nine MPs.
In the corridors of Westminster and indeed across mainland Britain, mention the DUP and the stereotype of the hellfire preaching, ultra-loyalist Ian Paisley senior (now Lord Bannside) springs to mind.
But the DUP of 2014 is not the DUP of 1974, the year of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike which crippled the then power-sharing Sunningdale Executive.
The DUP in 2014 is now a moderate Unionist, middle-class movement running the current power-sharing Stormont Executive – albeit very uneasily – with Sinn Fein.
To become Ulster’s leading Unionist movement, the DUP had to abandon its traditional loyalist urban working-class base and move onto middle-class Protestant rural turf which was once the bastion of the election-battered Ulster Unionists. First, under Ian Paisley senior, then under current First Minister Peter Robinson, since 2007 the DUP has been trying to demonstrate it is a worthy party of government. But who has it been trying to impress? Certainly not the grumbling loyalist working class, and definitely not Assembly partner
Sinn Fein.
The emergence of several new right-wing Unionist parties emphasises the loyalist working class remains distinctly unimpressed with the DUP’s new “fur coat brigade” style of Unionism.
The possible collapse of the Assembly over the thorny issue of welfare reform is further proof that reaching out the hand of friendship to republicans via Sinn Fein is not top of the DUP agenda.
The DUP has an ace card – the party takes its Westminster seats, while Sinn Fein clings to its outdated abstentionist policy; a policy not shared by Scottish and Welsh nationalists, as well as pro-Irish republican sympathisers within Labour.
The DUP is walking a very high tightrope – trying to regain its political credibility with the loyalist working-class in Northern Ireland, while at the same time trying to convince Cameron that it would make a moderate partner in a future coalition.
On the subject of coalitions, Sinn Fein is walking a similar tightrope, this time in the Irish Republic. Playing the anti-austerity card won Sinn Fein a substantial increase in its numbers of councillors across Ireland as well as boosting its MEP tally from one to four.
Southern premier Enda Kenny of Fine Gael faces the same dilemma as Cameron. His current Dail coalition partner, Irish Labour, has crashed and burned in the polls. To remain as Taoiseach, Kenny needs a new partner. But is Sinn Fein ready for the challenge?
In spite of Sinn Fein gains under party president Gerry Adams, a significant section of opinion in the Republic still views the party as the IRA’s political wing, as well as being an avowedly Marxist movement – which does not sit easily with the Irish Catholic Church.
If Sinn Fein is to win the coveted prize of a partnership government with Fine Gael, it must prove conclusively that it has totally abandoned its links to the violent past. It must rebrand itself as a soft socialist movement rather than a hard left revolutionary organisation.
Sinn Fein will also have to make concessions within the UK. In Northern Ireland, it must help the DUP to save Stormont and attempt a resolution to the various Protestant parade controversies. Sinn Fein must also stop supporting the relocation of commemorations to dead IRA terrorists in religiously mixed communities.
At Westminster, Sinn Fein will have to finally abandon abstentionism and take its House Commons seats. With the party poised to return to eight MPs at the general election, Sinn Fein may hold the keys to Ed Miliband entering Downing Street as part of a Labour-nationalist coalition rather than the Cameron alternative.