In the end, there was an air of inevitability about it all.  A quick 5:30am scan of the Twittersphere confirmed Ian Paisley’s survival by a thin margin of 444 votes. Some had stayed up till the wee hours with baited breath, wondering whether the perceived delay in news meant an avalanche of signatories as our first winter storm released its deadly grip.

It was the first parliamentary recall petition in UK history. That it even existed was big national news, particularly as it concerned one of the ten DUP MPs propping up Theresa May’s Conservative government in Westminster. Had the petition succeeded, the fall-out could have been seismic in ways that would have exposed Northern Ireland’s democratic deficit for all to see if they chose to look. 

The 2017 general election saw Paisley increase an already strong majority to 20,643. No surprises there, as the seat has been in the family since 1970 when Ian Senior got elected under the Protestant Unionist Party brand. The perhaps overlooked thing is that Sinn Féin’s Cara McShane fairly comfortably jumped into second place. In a by-election the task would have been theirs to take the fight to the DUP and provide an anti-Brexit voice, a voice for the massive chunks of Northern Irish voters who have been left alienated by the Westminster debates over the Irish border.

The big problem of course here is the abstentionism. A principled stand against British rule in Ireland, yes, but in the here and now, the DUP are let off the hook, and not just in North Antrim. Sammy Wilson summed up their current position in an interview with the BBC when he said, “(Theresa May) depends upon us in the House of Commons for support and part of the confidence and supply agreement was that she would deliver on the promises she made to the UK as a whole leaving the EU.”

For the DUP, it appears to matter not what the actual deal is with the EU, but in their own noble way they would prefer to be worse off if the alternative was the long-ago mooted special status. They’ll take their own voters down with the UK ship in the increasingly likely event of no deal, particularly as they share many unfettered free trade ideals with the more right-wing element leading the Brexit charge. In addition, the North Antrim constituency voted 62.2% to Leave despite Northern Ireland’s overall Remain numbers. Northern Ireland possibly gets cast as being dragged out of the EU against its will, but that would have been a difficult circle to square in this theoretical by-election. 

What of the UUP? They, like most unionists, see the idea of any separation from the UK as anathema. Yet leader Robin Swann struck an interesting tone with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier back in March when he said, “Unionists who may have voted remain, definitely did not vote to leave the UK.” 

Swann’s party only came out in favour of Brexit a year after the actual Leave vote, mainly to oppose what they saw as Sinn Féin wasting their Westminster seats. Their electoral pact with the DUP in fact coincided with losing all of their own representatives. In the context of Paisley’s recall petition, they did not officially register to campaign to oust the stricken MP despite broadly supporting the petition’s triggering – perhaps in itself a hint that unionism closed ranks on the issue.

We are left with a DUP-dominated Westminster when it comes to Northern Ireland issues, the independent Sylvia Hermon aside. There was already a majority here to remain in the EU, and there is arguably still a big majority for those who want both to stay in the EU and the UK, though antagonism from Westminster is changing minds on the latter question a day at a time. Whether Irish unity or hard Brexit with the equally hard Irish border, both are surely currently more trouble than they are worth, given our lack of political stability, or even functioning Executive.

So, what now in the fall-out from Paisley’s narrow escape? Swann has suggested he show some humility after the recall petition, and it is hard to disagree. In this era of brash and almost shameless politics, however, it’s probably a futile hope. In reacting to his brush with a by-election, Paisley observed, “90.6% said: we are keeping you, big fella, we like you.” Not wasting a second, he updated his Twitter biography reflecting this ‘achievement’.

Given the travel disruption we saw over the last couple of eligible signing days, he may have done some rain dancing recently.