On 3 May 2007, the SNP rewrote constitutional politics in the UK with an electoral message whitewashed in optimism. At the centre of its campaign was a set of pledges – from scrapping student fees to bringing troops home from Iraq – hung from a simple, two-word slogan: “It’s time.”
Fifteen years later and across the Irish Sea, Sinn Féin is about to do the same. It’s widely expected that the party will come first in elections to the Northern Irish Assembly on 5 May.
This victory, if it comes, will be extraordinary. When imperial officials first partitioned Ireland a century ago, they carefully traced the border around Protestant populations in the north-east, in an attempt to secure an enclave that forever felt British.
