Of course the DUP backed Labour and not May: It’s the economy stupid!
Recently, the news broke that the DUP broke from May in voting to support the NHS and keep tuition low, hindering the tenuous alliance the Tories have with them to retain power in parliament. The DUP (the controversial party from Northern Ireland that has ties to sectarian groups in the area)* supported greater funding for the NHS (the UK’s healthcare system) and voted against raising tuition fees.
While the Guardian ran this headline as if it were surprising, anyone who has knowledge of Northern Ireland isn’t surprised by this.
During my time living in Belfast, I noticed that it was very clearly an economically troubled area. In fact, the government sector accounts for about 1/3 of the workforce in Northern Ireland, and the NHS is huge there. In fact, it employs over 65,000 individuals in Northern Ireland. So, if you cut funding for them, you cut jobs for an already economically crippled area which has only recently come to a point where there is peace between the Protestant and Catholic communities. Mind you, the conflict there was never about theological issues to begin with. Jobs and discrimination were far more important to the people fighting in The Troubles (the name for the conflict in Northern Ireland), than theological debates about transubstantiation.
Then the universities. The universities in Northern Ireland are a major source of revenue. When I moved to Belfast in 2010, it was as a student, to study for an MA at Queen’s University, Belfast. The student population there was constantly worried about fees, and there were demonstrations against increasing tuition regularly. Naturally, as an American who pays overseas fees that subsidize the cost of school for local students, I was unable to discern any other reason but entitlement as to why they were complaining.
Regardless, the university system in Northern Ireland is huge. In 2014, there were over 56,000 undergraduates In Northern Ireland, 90% of which are from Northern Ireland (23,000 of them attend QUB). Raising costs on these students, who already live in an economically underprivileged area, basically cuts off a flow of money to the university. Cutting of this flow decreases education and increases unemployment. Currently, studying is a major engine for growth for the up-and coming “post-Troubles” generation and millennials. In fact, almost half of university age students in Northern Ireland attend university — the highest rate in the UK. The nerves of this vote are probably exacerbated by the massive increase in Northern Irish students applying to study in the Republic of Ireland post-Brexit (and post A-level scoring changes).
Regardless of policies or partisan alignments, the facts are clear and the logic is simple. If you try and decrease NHS and higher education spending, you probably won’t get the support of any Northern Irish political party. Northern Ireland has been neglected for far too long and (therefore) become far too reliant on government subsidised industries to let May’s conservative ideology hit their communities in the purse.
Economic systems, like all human social systems are complex dynamic systems. However, they are — at the end of the day — human systems. As such, if we just step back and think about the people in them, human nature doesn’t hint at a mystery. These political patterns aren’t so surprising when you look at them this way.
*I don’t want readers to think I’m taking a shot at the DUP here. I think the DUP, like all parties, has some good ideas and some shady history. The fact that Sinn Féin has ties to the IRA is not lost on me, just this article isn’t about them).
