Divorce was perhaps always an issue for SDLP and Fianna Fáil’s high-profile marriage

A mile across town and three years later, the special relationship between Fianna Fáil and SDLP went out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Colum Eastwood casually told his party delegates at a meeting at the Clayton Hotel that it was over.

Perhaps calling it a marriage of despair between two parties terrified by Sinn Féin’s success is going too far. But the marriage was never convincing.

Surely this wasn’t a love job with two deeply committed partners.

In 2018 Eastwood told the Belfast Telegraph he could not rule out a “realignment in Irish politics” which would see his party step aside as the organizer of Fianna Fáil in Northern Ireland.

The prospect of a defunct SDLP loomed. After losing all three MPs in 2017, the party’s prospects looked bleak. Their leader admitted they were financially faced with an adversary in Sinn Féin “with a seemingly endless war chest.”

The partnership, announced the following year, did not go as far as some had expected, but it nonetheless stirred controversy in a party that was a broad ideological tent.

Those on the Social Democrat wing were deeply uncomfortable with aligning themselves with Micheál Martin’s right-of-centre party.

Claire Hanna said she could never imagine becoming a Fianna Fáil MLA.

“I’m not a box of cereal, I can’t suddenly become another brand,” she told BBC Northern Ireland’s The View.

SDLP founding member Brid Rodgers also opposed the move, but it was backed by 70 percent of party delegates.

West Tyrone MLA Daniel McCrossan said he had concerns but it was “the right way forward”. Former leader Margaret Ritchie, who previously ruled out a partnership under her oversight, said the political landscape had changed.

Of the SDLP’s 12 MLAs, Hanna alone did not attend the unveiling of the new union. Her election as South Belfast MP later that year perhaps helped change the dynamic.

Eastwood and Hanna worked well together at Westminster and the development of the Fianna-Fáil relationship would have increased the likelihood of conflict. In the south, an ultra-cautious Martin wasn’t pushing anyway.

The SDLP partnered with Fianna Fáil hoping for a boost when she had 12 MLAs. The party is now four fewer and its vote count has fallen from 12 percent to 9 percent.

Fianna Fáil’s own falling poll ratings and Martin’s unpopularity with northern nationalists meant that even if cross-border relations did develop, they would never become a magic wand for the SDLP.

Eastwood’s party faces many challenges as it prepares for next year’s municipal elections. But in his words, they will “stand on their own two feet.”