Alliance causes huge upset

Alliance causes huge upset

28 May 2014

DOWNPATRICK student Patrick Brown pulled off the shock of the election in Newry, Mourne and Down when he dramatically took the final seat in Rowallane.

The student from Bells Hill surged past the Ulster Unionist Walter Lyons who had been battling with Eddie Hughes of Sinn Fein throughout the day without realising the real threat would come from a different direction.

To be fair to Lyons, no-one saw it coming. There is no comparable history of Sinn Fein voters transferring in such large numbers to Alliance so when Hughes was eliminated at the end of stage four it looked only to be only a matter of time before Lyons would be returned. However, Brown received a massive 258 transfers from Hughes leaving him 79 votes ahead of Lyons at the end of the count.

In a further twist, as the drama was being played out in Newry Leisure Centre around 11pm, Brown was in Sheffield where he is a final year politics student. He had handed in his Masters dissertation that morning before retiring to bed never believing he had a chance of being elected. Even when the first preference votes were announced there was no sign of the coming shock result — Brown polled 510 votes, just 40 more than his performance in his only other council election when he stood in Rowallane in 2011.

He had been keeping in touch with the election by text messages with SDLP candidate Terry Andrews and it was Andrews who broke the news to him just after 11am. Andrews also later recorded the declaration of his victory and sent it to him.

The Recorder spoke to him by phone just 10 minutes after he was elected and there was no doubting the surprise In his voice,

“I am proud and delighted to have won but I never expected this result,” he said. “Because of my course I was in Sheffield throughout the campaign and only handed in my final dissertation this morning.

“I hadn’t planned to come home yet but I’ll have to talk to my party council now and begin preparations.

“It’s a great result for the party and great to know that we have the support in the area. It has been a long time since there has been an Alliance councillor in this area and I am really looking forward to the challenge.”

There was some Unionist criticism just after the election because Brown was in England throughout the campaign but this dissipated when it became clear he had been studying and would be coming home to take up his seat.

For Lyons there was only devastation at what must have been one of the most cruel eliminations in local election history.

From early in the day, as the ballot papers began to spill from the boxes, all parties were reporting Lyons and Hughes were locked in a close battle.

Hughes confounded all expectations, including within his own party, to amass 552 first preference votes. An affable man, he had been extremely energetic during the campaign, canvassing throughout the Rowallane area, rather than concentrating on his home town of Ballynahinch.

With Lyons polling 672 votes the scene was set for a nail biting fight between the two men which intensified throughout the count so that by the end of stage three Lyons was ahead by just 10 votes.

The elimination of the TUV’s Philip Hamilton gave Lyons a huge surge at the fourth count putting him in an apparently unassailable position — 200 votes ahead with Hughes next to be eliminated.

Hughes departed content in a fine showing for Sinn Fein which included the comprehensive defeat of former Ballynahinch councillor Mickey Coogan who quit Sinn Fein and stood as an independent. Coogan polled just 149.

Congratulations were being openly extended to Lyons as the count progressed through the final stage of what now appeared to be a formality. That was before the bombshell which came from the Hughes’ transfers.

Elsewhere there were no other surprises. The SDLP’s Terry Andrews topped the poll as expected and was elected on the first count. The decision by the SDLP to ask Andrews to rejoin the party after Maria McCarthy withdrew from the election paid off and his switch from independent clearly did him no harm.

UUP candidate Robert Burgess was just 13 short of the quota when first preference votes were counted and was elected on the third count.

The DUP took the remaining two seats with good vote management leaving sitting councillor Billy Walker and newcomer Henry Harvey, son of former Rowallane councillor Cecil Harvey, with almost identical votes.

Off the smaller parties, Philip Hamilton will be pleased with the first showing for the TUV in the Rowallane area. He polled 433 votes which attracted some surprise within DUP circles who had not expected such a strong showing.

NI21’s Alistair Stranney was much sought after by the media for comments during the election count but this was more for the turmoil which was sweeping the party that day than for his 267 votes.