In the event of united Ireland could DUP attract a significant vote in the Republic / 26 Counties ?

The southern parties have realistically failed in any attempts to enter politics in NI

Sinn Fein seem to have done well.

I'm not sure anyone considers them a southern party

So not a southern party trying to break in to NI then. Thanks for making my point for me, I guess.

And again.

Are you agreeing with me, or completely failing to comprehend something basic?

No, not comprehending me.

There's nothing to correct. I won't continue this pointless back and forth.

FF and FG were both founded, in the South, after partition. In that sense, they are indeed southern parties. The suggestion that they "abandoned" NI might imply that they operated there at one time but withdrew. This is not really the case; FG never operated there, and FF only ever did so to a limited extent*.

In both cases this was because they were reluctant to split the nationalist vote by drawing votes from the Nationalist party. This wasn't an issue for SF because they didn't contest elections to the Stormont parliament.

SF aside, the only significant political party to have been founded before partition is the Labour Party, founded in 1912. But the Belfast Labour Party had been operating in and around Belfast since the 1890s and, not wishing to split the labour vote, even before partition the Labour Party left the field clear for them. In 1924 the Belfast Labour Party reconstituted itself as the Nothern Ireland Labour Party.

*[Eamon de Valera did fight the 1933 election for Fianna Fail in South Down, but I think only after it had been established that the Nationalist party wasn't going to run there. He won the election but didn't take his seat, and didn't contest the following election in 1938. Neither did the Nationalists; as a result the seat was taken by an independent Unionist who later joined the UUP. The Nationalists recovered the seat in 1945 and held it until the abolition of Stormont.]

It's not completely a what-if since, as noted, FF did enter into NI politics in the sense of having Dev contest South Down but not take his seat. They gave it up because, I think, they concluded that they weren't acheiving anything.

If FG had entered NI politics, presumably they would have done so on the basis of taking their seats — if they, too, had pursued abstentionism, what would they have been bringing to the table? But if they did, then they would have been competing head-to-head with the Nationalists and this would have made no sense — of all the southern parties, they were the ones closeset, historically and ideologically, to the Nationalists; what would they offer that the Nationalists didn't?

And it's probably worth pointing out that SF was also largely inactive in NI politics in the Stormont period — they didn't participate in Stormont elections at all, or in Westminster elections except briefly in the 1950s. The truth is that SF had never been strong in NI — in the 1918 election they won only 7% of the vote in the six counties that were to become NI, and only 3 out of 30 seats — and for most of the Stormont period the party was moribund in the Republic and almost non-existent in NI. The voice of nationalists in NI was, well, the Nationalists, until they were eclipsed by the SDLP in the early 1970s.

Well I suppose I should have said 'stayed' involved in all Ireland politics which SF seem to have managed without taking their seats in WM. I take your point about them not always being the most popular party with the electorate.

Well, their political engagement in NI, while abstaining from Westminster, is greatly facilitated by the existence of the Assembly and the NI government. If government structures were still as they were in, say, 1980, then Westminster elections would be pretty much the only show in town, and if SF sought to participate in those elections but abstain from Westminster I think they would struggle to attract much support. Voting SF in those circumstances would seem like a fairly nihilistic stance.

It's not a coincidence that SF's electoral rise comes in tandem with the ceasefires and with the devolution provided for in the GFA. If either of those elements had been missing, SF would not have the electoral position in NI politics that it has today.

It did originally, and for a long time.

It was founded in 1880 as the governing body for the sport throughout Ireland, though in fact at the time there was little soccer played outside the north, except by Dublin University and by teams associated with British army garrisons in the rest of the country. But over time that changed - the Leinster Football Association was founded in 1982, and it and its clubs joined the IFA. The IFA was the national body for soccer until 1921, when the Irish Cup final (between Shelbourne and Glentoran) was a draw, and had to be replayed. The final had been played in Belfast and, under the rules of the competition, the replay should have been in Dublin, but the Association organised it in Belfast. Shelbourne refused to play in Belfast and the Association then announced that they had forfeited the game and awarded the cup to Glentoran. This was a big deal because Shelbourne was a significant team in the IFA; they had won the Irish Cup four time and, at the time of the dispute, were in fact the current holders. The Leinster Football Association withdrew from the IFA and founded the rival FAI (initially called the FAIFS) and the League of Ireland.

From that point on the IFA included only teams based in NI but still considered itself the peak body for the whole country and its repfesentative team competed internationally as "Ireland" and included players from both parts of Ireland. The FAI team also competed internatinally as "Ireland" from 1936, and included players from both parts of Ireland. This state of affairs continued until the 1950s when FIFA intervened and brokered a compromise under which (among other things) the IFA accepted the reality that its remit extended only to Northern Ireland.