‘Useless’ most common response when people in the North asked to describe Stormont in a word

“USELESS” WAS THE most common response when people in the North were recently asked to describe Stormont in a word.

The new polling was carried out by More in Common, an organisation founded in the aftermath of the murder of MP Jo Cox in 2016 and which carries out regular public opinion research.

It surveyed over 1,000 adults in the north between 9 and 20 October, in the days after Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant moved to block the Orange Order Drumcree parade from passing down the Garvaghy Road.

The Belfast High Court this morning ruled that this decision was lawful.

In addition to carrying out polling on the Drumcree dispute, the survey also asked respondents for their thoughts on the Stormont Executive.

Close to two in three (64%) said that Stormont makes “little or no difference to their own lives”.

And when asked to sum up Stormont in a word, the most common response was “useless”.

Other common responses included rubbish, shambles, mess, shit, divided, corrupt, and disaster.

Meanwhile, some 22% of respondents are “indifferent” to the prospect of Stormont collapsing again, though slightly more people are concerned at the prospect (39%) than unconcerned (32%).

Nationalist and Alliance voters are also more concerned by the potential for a Stormont collapse than unionist voters.

Drumcree

The polling meanwhile found that most people back the decision of Bryant to ban the march, while a majority also feel that the Parades Commission was wrong to allow it in the first place.

Over half (53%) agreed with Bryant’s decision, but 85% of TUV voters and 76% of DUP voters said he made the wrong decision.

And while 53% also felt that the original decision of the Parades Commission was wrong, some 74% of TUV voters backed this decision, and 73% of DUP voters felt the same.

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Most people sympathised with the Garvaghy Road residents during the dispute (38%), while 21% sympathised more with the Portadown Orange Order (a further 21% sympathised with both sides equally). 

Meanwhile, people were asked to give the first word that comes to mind when they thought of the dispute.

Within the Catholic community, words like disgraceful, unnecessary, pointless, avoidable, sad, and stupid appeared.

The same words appeared within the Protestant community, but so too did words like lawless, mob rule, let them walk, disrespected, unfair and terrorists.

And while nationalist and Alliance voters overwhelmingly agree that a parade should only go ahead if the residents agree to it, most unionist voters do not feel the same way.

Elsewhere, a majority (74%) of those from the Catholic community feel that a parade in a mainly unionist area shouldn’t go ahead.

However, some 60% of those from the Protestant community said an Orange parade should go ahead in a mainly nationalist area.

And while a majority of Catholics agree that the organisers of a republican parade in a mainly unionist area should offer to take a different route (82%), less than half (46%) of Protestants feel the same in relation to an Orange parade in a mainly nationalist area.

Meanwhile, close to half (49%) say the Drumcree dispute is not a strong enough reason to collapse Stormont, while 27% say that it is.

While nationalist and Alliance voters are firmly against the prospect of collapsing Stormont over the dispute, a majority of unionists would support a walkout over the issue.

‘Divided’

When asked to sum up Northern Ireland in 2026 in a few words, divided was the most common word used.

And following the Drumcree dispute, a majority now once again see this “divide” as being between nationalist and unionists.

This is in contrast to opinion polling after rioting in June, which found that the greatest divide was between immigrants and people born in Northern Ireland.