A decade ago, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) viewed Brexit as a potential gamechanger in the struggle to resist future pressure for a united Ireland. As the author and journalist Fintan O’Toole wrote in an essay published last year, the DUP hoped that the 2016 referendum would deliver “a double exit. Brexit would not simply mean the UK’s departure from the EU. It would also be an act of separation from the Republic. It would reverse the slow drift towards integration.” That proved to be, to put it mildly, a deeply flawed judgment.
The direction of travel since 2016 has instead been the opposite. Rather than leading to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which would have disastrously undermined the Good Friday agreement, the UK’s divorce agreement from Brussels eventually placed one in the Irish Sea. The logic of further economic integration between north and south within the EU’s single market was reinforced.
At the same time, demographic change has meant that people with a Catholic background now outnumber those with a Protestant one in Northern Ireland, changing the political calculus. In 2022, Sinn Féin won a historic victory in Stormont elections, leading to Michelle O’Neill’s appointment as the first nationalist first minister. On Monday, during a meeting with the heads of the UK’s other devolved nations, Ms O’Neill welcomed off-the-cuff remarks by Donald Trump during an unofficial visit to Ireland, in which he said he would “love” to see unification. The US president’s comments, she claimed, reflected the fact “that there is a growing conversation around constitutional change”.
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That is undoubtedly the case. But it is a debate that has barely begun, and one which needs to be conducted with care and caution. The 1998 Good Friday agreement was intentionally vague about the criteria for holding a border poll. Successive governments in London and Dublin have since preferred to concentrate on promoting and developing cross-border co-operation.
Given the history, and the level of political risk involved, that was a sensible strategy. But the dynamics of the debate have shifted. Mr Trump’s blithe remarks followed hard on the heels of an early spat between Ms O’Neill and Andy Burnham, after the prime minister said during a visit to Belfast that a poll on a united Ireland was “off the table”.
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In the short and medium term, Mr Burnham’s position makes sense. Sinn Féin’s commitment to a referendum on Irish unity by 2030 is wildly unrealistic. But for all sides, sleepwalking into a vote without adequate preparation is equally unpalatable. In the absence of a proper debate, commitment to unity in the Irish republic is broadbased but shallow. In Northern Ireland a disturbing revival of tensions over Orange Order marches in Catholic areas suggests deepening polarisation, fuelled by ongoing political dysfunction at Stormont.
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A sober, lengthy and detailed public conversation is required over what form unification might take, and the possible trade-offs involved. In an interview with the Guardian last month, the former prime minister Gordon Brown suggested that “of course, in the long term, Ireland will be united”. Unlike Mr Trump, though, he added a significant rider. Reaching that outcome would be “a long process where people have got to come together and find a way of agreeing. Basically, that is the issue: whether people can actually agree.” Leaders on all sides of the debate should heed that caveat.
