Our Next First Minister

During Monday's "Stormont Live" I asked Alasdair McDonnell if it really mattered who won the SDLP leadership contest as the party would inevitably face a squeeze at the next Assembly elections, given that Sinn Fein would tell nationalists it had a realistic chance of becoming the biggest Stormont party. Consequently Sinn Fein would have the right to nominate Martin McGuinness as First Minister, a move which seems guaranteed to ensure that the DUP will refuse the post which their MLAs are wont to refer to as "the Deputy".

The SDLP deputy leader disagreed with my analysis, predicting that, should the 2011 Assembly election produce such an outcome, the DUP and the UUP would get together and form one big party, thus ensuring a unionist became First Minister.

This prompted me to revise the precedents. In a recent fact sheet, the TUV leader Jim Allister has explained how the legal changes after St. Andrews put Sinn Fein in line for the First Minister's position. He rejects the DUP argument that the legislation did not faithfully reflect the St. Andrews Agreement.

So what about the possibility of a post election unionist pact? Some SDLP sources think this could be as easy as the formation of the group which now sees Alliance banding together with the greens and Dr. Kieran Deeny for Stormont purposes. But I am not so sure.

The McDonnell scenario reminded me of the UUP's attempt in 2006 to add the late PUP leader David Ervine to their numbers in order to boost their rank in the Assembly pecking order. The former speaker Eileen Bell eventually ruled against the move arguing that the definition of a Party given in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act should be taken into account.

In her words, those characteristics should be "a short, suitable name; a headquarters, or at least an address for the purpose of communication; officers of the party, including at least a leader, a treasurer and a contact person, called a "nominating officer", for the purpose of liaising with the Electoral Commission and others; a constitution; a scheme for financial support of the party; and an intention to contest elections."

She went on "in making a decision about any future list for publication, I shall require a party to have all those characteristics."

Some Stormont sources point out that in the crisis atmosphere which might accompany such an outcome to the 2011 election, all sorts of manouvreings may become possible. It is, for example, likely for realpolitik reasons that we might already be heading towards a wholesale renegotiation.

But as things stand the Ervine precedent seems to make a tactical unionist alliance simply in order to capture the First Minister's job a bit difficult, never mind all the other reasons why the DUP and the UUP might find it hard to cuddle up together.

On the post election timings, my reading is that the politicians would have about a fortnight to wrestle with the Assembly arithmetic. The clerk is due to convene a meeting of the new Assembly within eight days from the date of the 2011 poll, then the St. Andrews Act stipulates that the First Minister should be elected within seven days of the first sitting. This is one for the anoraks right now, but it could be taking up rather more of our time in May 2011.

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