Hanna discussed starting new party over Fianna Fáil deal
PA/Liam McBurneyAn SDLP MP has said she and party colleagues discussed forming a new party in 2019.
Claire Hanna told the BBC's Red Lines podcast the discussions took place against the backdrop of the now-ended partnership between the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Fianna Fáil.
The new relationship was backed by the majority of SDLP elected representatives and members but a significant minority remained unhappy.
Many felt it was a precursor to a formal merger between the two parties.
“At that time, in those few months, I did think my time in elected political life was possibly coming to an end if that [partnership] had gone in the trajectory we and others thought it was going to.
"I thought deeply about where I fitted. I didn’t think that I fitted into any of the existing political vehicles that were around,” she told Red Lines.
“I was the only MLA who didn’t support the partnership but I wasn’t the only person. There were quite a few councillors and activists who didn’t.
"We did discuss what something might look like,” she added.
Ms Hanna was recently re-elected as the MP for Belfast South and Mid Down with a majority of more than 12,000 votes.
Her family is steeped in SDLP history.
Her father is a former general secretary of the party and her mother served in the Stormont Executive.
Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne‘Bleak place'
“I genuinely think that something like the SDLP, a party with a history, values and a heritage, should exist," she told the podcast.
"If the SDLP disappeared into a Fianna Fáil vehicle, then that wouldn’t have existed”, she added.
In September 2022 the party signalled the end of the partnership, with party leader Colum Eastwood saying his party needed to stand on his own two feet.
“Things moved and changed. The institutions came back and the Brexit process jumped us on so, thankfully, that didn’t need to go anywhere but I did have to consider the possibility that my time in the SDLP was over," she said.
"It was very difficult,” she added.
Ms Hanna said she understood why the party leader explored the partnership.
She said that 2019 was a "very bleak place for the SDLP".
"We had no MPs. We had no MEPs because we were out of Europe. The Assembly was down. It looked like the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement might never come back. It was a bleak horizon.”
“It was the wrong thing to do but I think Colum Eastwood was trying to do something. It was the route that he thought possibly would take the party out of the place it was in.
"It wasn’t the right route but I can understand the circumstances it came from.”
In the aftermath of the announcement Ms Hanna quit as her party’s Brexit spokeswoman and stopped attending group meetings at Stormont.
She said she would have quit the party if the partnership developed.
“I didn’t think it was something that was going to work electorally and it turns out it didn’t," she said.
“It’s worth saying this was a thought exercise. It’s just, if the SDLP doesn’t exist, do I have a political home and what they might look like?
"I wasn’t down at the electoral commission registering logos. It wasn’t like that.”
Friendship
Ms Hanna is one of the party’s highest-profile representatives and is regularly seen on the Commons green benches sitting beside Mr Eastwood.
She said she believes the Foyle MP is doing a good job as leader.
“It’s not a one-person job. It is a small party - in its resources as well.
“We are good friends and colleagues . Colum and I spend a lot of time together. We talk about the issues. Running a political party is harder than it looks and there is a problem a day to deal with.
“We discussed all that had gone under the bridge. We are different people politically but we have so much in common and we have a good working relationship and a good friendship.”
She also spoke on the podcast about the potential for constitutional change of the island of Ireland.