2024 will be remembered as the year of new leaders: Gavin Robinson, Mike Nesbitt and Claire Hanna.
And with Stephen Farry stepping down as deputy leader, I think it’s likely that Alliance will also be reflecting on Naomi Long’s position, after what was a disappointing general election.
I’m not suggesting that there is a move afoot to topple her, but I have talked to quite a few party members who admitted to me, after the election, that ‘something had gone wrong’.
The biggest challenge, I suppose, is for Robinson. He took over at a particularly grim time after the Jeffrey Donaldson story broke; but also just as the wheels were coming off the DUP ‘deal’ that led to the rebooting of the assembly.
What had seemed like quite the victory at the end of January was beginning to resemble a massive own goal a few weeks later, as it became clear that the deal had been massively oversold.
July’s general election was one of the worst results for the party in a couple of decades, during which it dominated the unionist electoral and political landscape; usually comfortably ahead of the combined total of its unionist opponents.
In 2017, for example, it won 36% compared to 11% for other unionists. But in July it was 22% to 18%.
It’s no longer the largest party at assembly, Westminster or council levels and has no significant leverage with the UK government.
Robinson faces a huge task in trying to halt the party’s decline and reverse its fortunes: a task made much more difficult by the continuing influence of Jim Allister’s TUV and the ongoing fallout from the NI Protocol and Windsor Framework.
His direction of travel will, I think, be towards building some sort of ‘vehicle of cooperation’ with the UUP; but the UUP may worry about being used to save his skin rather than rebuild from their own wreckage.
A lot will depend on which way Mike Nesbitt wants to steer the UUP. His task is to do what none of the seven leaders (including him twice) since David Trimble has been able to do: rebuild and reposition itself into the party of first choice for both mainstream and small-u unionism.
Cosying up to the DUP will make that task very difficult, especially as the DUP also needs to recalibrate if it wants to win back the votes it has lost to the TUV.
Meanwhile, Claire Hanna has a similar problem to Nesbitt’s. She has to do what none of the post-Hume/Mallon leadership has been able to do: rebuild and reposition the SDLP into the party of first choice for mainstream and small-n nationalism.
But in one particular way her task is more difficult than Nesbitt’s, because Sinn Féin, the SDLP’s primary opponent, has been on a roll (on this side of the border, anyway) for the last few years.
And, as I noted earlier, Alliance also has a problem, even if Long does remain in charge. A few weeks before the election the party believed it could be looking at three seats (East Belfast, North Down and Lagan Valley), a possible breakthrough in Strangford and a continuation of its post-2017 electoral surge elsewhere.
It certainly wasn’t a disastrous election, but it clearly fell well short of its own expectations. And when that sort of thing happens – particularly to a party that has got used to doing well – questions are asked.
In a broader sense Sinn Féin also has a problem: it is doing much better in the north than the south, creating the impression of what might be described as two-SFs-on-the-one-island.
A lot is going to depend on how the party does in the coming general election in the south; for if it takes yet another hit under Mary Lou McDonald it seems inevitable that there would be a change in leadership.
That might cheer up some unionists, but it might also push the Irish reunification campaign away from Sinn Féin influence and towards a more problematic vehicle including Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Colum Eastwood.
Let’s not forget the Conservative Party, either, which is in the middle of its own election campaign and, at the time of writing, down to a very uninspiring choice between Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat.
Not quite the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the original four Marx Brothers, but still, a pretty darn bizarre collection of gluttons for punishment.
Mind you, the role of leading any political party is probably best suited to those who can endure or even enjoy those levels of punishment.