Beginning of the End of Northern Ireland?

[IceAgeComing]

If unification happens (which is a big if) it takes a very long time - frankly it wouldn't surprise me if you are talking a decade at least.  The current core constitutional structures and power sharing of some form would need to be retained (the Unionists wouldn't be happy if the Nationalists got power sharing while they were part of the UK only for it to immediately go away in the opposite situation and they have a lot of guns) and whatever process you would have would need to be designed to minimise bloodshed and terrorism as much as possible.  As others have said it'd open up a constitutional mess in the Republic as well: while asymmetric devolution is a thing all over the world you'd think that it would open up a debate regarding the unitary nature of Ireland's current constitution and whether that should be reformed and then if you are using NI-sized chunks the old Provinces seem like a sensible thing to use but then what do you do with the bits of Ulster that ended up in the Republic post-partition: you can't add them to NI since it would disrupt the power sharing arrangements and the two have been governed separately for 100 years at this point.  Add in the fact that you'd have a chunk of non-EU territory joining an EU member state so they'd want to get involved to make sure that NI followed EU regulations that the UK doesn't need to follow and that the impact doesn't risk the Irish (and therefore EU) economy and you get a situation which would take a very long time for all parties to sort the situation out: especially since the US historically also have an interest in Irish affairs.

Ultimately the 2007-2016 status quo was probably the best for NI: while there were certainly barriers you clearly saw the country trending towards more stable government and terrorism was increasingly a thing of the past and a big part of that was that the settlement did make the symbolic thing of what country Northern Ireland was in increasingly irrelevant to the practical questions regarding the governance of Northern Ireland.  And while there always will be issues between the DUP and Sinn Fein for obvious reasons in government they seem to work together as well as you could expect considering the gulf that exists between them.  Brexit does cause issues though because the practical differences between the UK and the Republic increase significantly and that causes issues for the current status-quo purely because reunification would be an impactful change now.

The real risk though is the risk of increased political violence on both sides and while I don't think you'll ever see a return to levels seen during the Troubles I do think that fear is impacting how all sides in Ireland act on the issue - Sinn Fein talk about a border poll but in an abstract way because they know the risks that one would create and the impact those would have on their base.  I don't think people outside Ireland quite appreciate that though.

[IceAgeComing]

And what that led to was the UUP losing a seat notionally; the SDLP only gaining one notionally, with Sinn Fein being the big gainers of the election.  Nesbitt immediately resigned as Ulster Unionist leader and the leadership they've had since is very much not of that view.  I think broadly people look at that campaign as being something bold, but very unsuccessful for the UUP - less so for the SDLP who did a lot better than I think people were expecting them to simply by holding on to their seats.

The structure of power sharing is hardly perfect for anyone but that's why it works: its designed to prevent anyone from holding on to all of the power.  You have to consider the legacy of majority rule in Northern Ireland: when they had full control from 1921 to 1972 the Unionists completely disempowered the Catholic minority by moving from STV to highly gerrymandered FPTP constituencies that they promptly never changed since they entrenched a particular type of Unionist in positions of power, they retained property requirements to vote in Local Government elections to ensure Unionist government in majority-Catholic areas and used those positions of power to discriminate significantly against the Catholic populations of those areas.  The reason why the RUC was seen as being systematically biased against Catholics was because it was: and that was a legacy of that period that lasted for decades after the Parliament was abolished and they started to attempt power sharing.  Everyone in Northern Ireland knows this is what happened and that's why neither side, no matter what they say publicly, wants to return to that sort of politics: not only because it could mean their community being disempowered (and that's what Unionists fear most); but also because the perception of that happening would lead to an increase in political violence and no one wants that.

Northern Ireland is a unique place: I'm still a young person but I can remember stories about violence in Northern Ireland airing on the TV news seemingly every night when I was a kid and I grew up in the late 90s-early 2000s so that's the tail end of the troubles: things were worse in prior decades.  And while if you look at it from purely an academic basis the current system might not seem optimal: its a lot better than militants assassinating people on the streets for the crime of having the wrong religion, or trying to bomb crowded places.

To address the "end sectarianism" point: how do you do that?  If there was a viable way for that to happen then don't you think past UK governments would have tried?  You are reliant on the people to vote for non-sectarian parties to do that and based on recent election results while the Brexit issue seems to have galvanised some Unionist support for the Alliance and they seem to be on the up; there's limited evidence that is going to lead to a nation-wide surge for other cross-community parties.  And in this case the institutional change has to follow the people changing since if it doesn't the risk of political violence dramatically increases.