UK Election: Northern Ireland Elected More Irish Nationalists

On an exciting UK election night, Northern Ireland elected more Irish nationalists to Britain's parliament than pro-British unionists for the first time on Friday, after the largest nationalist party Sinn Fein narrowly won the final of the region's 18 seats.

That meant Sinn Fein kept its seven seats and the resurgent fellow pro-Irish SDLP won two, combining to pass the Democratic Unionist Party, which fell from 10 seats to eight. The cross-community Alliance Party took the final seat, adding to the majority of anti-Brexit MPs after its share of the total vote rocketed by almost 10%.

A first since the partition of Ireland in 1921, the result led to increased calls from Sinn Fein for a vote to split from the rest of the United Kingdom, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a resounding majority across the union.

The threat of leaving the EU has given new momentum to proponents of Scottish independence. Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist party is battling it out with Labour for swing seats in Scotland and polls suggest it is likely to regain at least some of the seats it lost in 2017.

The unambiguously pro-Remain SNP has benefited from Labour’s wishy-washy Brexit stance as well as the unpopularity of leader Jeremy Corbyn. In her battle to win over Labour voters, Sturgeon has somewhat downplayed her party’s defining issue—Scottish nationalism—but the party is still calling for a new independence referendum in 2020.

In the event that London refuses to permit a referendum, the SNP has not ruled out holding an unauthorized “Catalonia-style” independence vote: a pretty alarming prospect given what’s been happening in Catalonia.

In the meantime, U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the latter's election win and said that Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a 'massive' new trade deal after Brexit.

"This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the E.U. Celebrate Boris," Trump said in a tweet.

Johnson's Conservatives have made a net gain of 47 seats in UK election with just two seats.

As a result, the pound surged more than 2% as Johnson's Conservative Party won a resounding election victory that markets believe makes an orderly British exit from the European Union all but certain.

Sterling reached a 19-month high versus the dollar and its strongest levels against the euro since shortly after the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Johnson's Conservatives were on course to win a comfortable majority of more than 70 seats in the 650-seat parliament in what could be the biggest Conservative national election win since Margaret Thatcher's 1987 triumph.

Johnson fought the election under the slogan of "Get Brexit Done", promising to end the deadlock.

On the other hand, the opposition Labour Party promised the public a second Brexit referendum.