NI election 2022: Dull campaign could still produce a seismic result
- Published
Most controversy in the campaign has surrounded election posters
Many people have commented that the campaign for the Northern Ireland Assembly election has been sluggish, or even boring.
But as I know from many years of covering elections, dull campaigns are nothing new.
Late November in Northern Ireland is not a great time for an election - and the assembly campaign of 2003 was nothing special.
Until, that is, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) gate-crashed the headquarters of its rivals, external the Ulster Unionists (or, to be precise, the footpath outside).
Inside, the former first minister and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader David Trimble was holding a news conference.
About what, no one can today remember.
He had spent the campaign, set against the context of yet another Stormont collapse, trying to tempt his ageing rival, DUP leader Ian Paisley, into a TV debate he hoped could help him claw back the obvious deficit.
So when his quarry turned up on his doorstep unannounced in a battle bus, it was too good to be true.
We were interviewing Ian Paisley and his deputy Peter Robinson when Mr Trimble and entourage approached from behind.
"Dr Paisley there's someone here to see you," I said, barely hiding my glee.
And the rest is election history.
TV gold
For 10 minutes or more the sides traded insults.
The UUP accused the DUP of hiding Paisley away.
The DUP chanted: "Where's Jeffrey?" It was a reference to the disaffected UUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson, who would go on to quit the UUP after the election, and who now leads the DUP.
Alliance's Naomi Long dubbed it "the fuss at the bus".
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It was an unedifying spectacle, but let's not get too pious about it: It was also TV gold.
As the DUP leadership made its way back to the bus, I steadied myself for my piece to camera.
"They say it's been a dull campaign. They won't be saying that any more."
It is a line a top DUP adviser still regularly quotes back to me whenever we meet.
Missing the 'crocodile moment'
Fast forward to the assembly election campaign of 2022.
It has been another dull campaign and apart from a coach used by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the only bus in sight is the one - to use football parlance - parked defensively by most of the parties anxious not to give their rivals a "crocodile moment".
When the then-DUP leader Arlene Foster said during the last assembly election campaign in 2017 that she would never support an Irish Language Act because "if you feed a crocodile it keeps coming back for more", she effectively wrote Sinn Féin's election slogan.
Arlene Foster's "crocodile moment" about the Irish Language Act became Sinn Féin's election slogan
It was not the only reason Sinn Féin came within a seat of catching the DUP.
But the number of reptiles - inflatable and otherwise - who turned up to vote prove it helped.
And so we wait for something - anything - to put some bite into the campaign of 2022.
Dullest in years?
Former DUP special adviser Tim Cairns put it well when he said the campaign had "lacked any interest, momentum or excitement". He tweeted that it had been "the dullest in years".
Before writing this, I invited some close colleagues to give me examples to prove him wrong.
I am still waiting.
The DUP has tried hard to goad Sinn Féin into saying something about a border poll which might galvanise unionists into the polling booths in sufficient numbers to keep them in the first minister's office.
It has largely been met with tumbleweed.
The DUP has tried to goad Michelle O'Neill into talking about a border poll - but so far, she hasn't been drawn
Michelle O'Neill has been seen more often in the gym pumping iron than in TV studios pumping a referendum on Irish unity.
All the parties want to tackle the cost of living crisis and problems affecting the health service. Who doesn't?
Sinister attacks on women candidates
On the sinister side, police are investigating three incidents involving attacks on female candidates.
In the latest, the DUP say its South Down candidate Diane Forsythe had been the victim of "a libellous and malicious campaign".
The People Before Profit candidate in East Belfast, Hannah Kenny, was gripped by the arm and the throat by three men who subjected her to sectarian and misogynistic abuse.
And there have been a number of poster thefts, with the SDLP's candidate in Belfast South, Elsie Trainor, fighting back against two youths and filming the incident on her phone.
Police are treating that as a hate crime.
Result matters
I briefly sat up at the DUP manifesto launch when a reporter called Sir Jeffrey "Gerry", but he brushed it off, saying Ian Paisley used to call him "Jeremy".
There have been stories around anti-protocol rallies mostly involving someone not taking part - the UUP leader Doug Beattie - who got a rock through the window of his constituency office.
There have been stories about anti-Protocol rallies, where both Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and TUV leader Jim Allister spoke
But that was about it.
The election of November 2003 turned out to be seismic.
The DUP, for the first time in a Stormont election, became the biggest party.
But it probably had nothing to do with the bus or the fuss.
And with Sinn Féin favourites to emerge victorious for the first time, the 2022 election may turn out to be equally significant.
But if that happens, it is unlikely to be because of anything that happened in the past month.
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