Beginning of the End of Northern Ireland?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

The point is that if Irish re-unification was a major issue for a growing number of voters, that ought to have led in an increase in vote share for the only party willing to campaign on that issue. The fact this didn't happen suggests it isn't a priority.

And it is important not to forget that the long-term logic of the Good Friday Agreement is that eventually Northern Ireland should reach the point where it makes little difference whether the province is technically in the United Kingdom or technically in the Republic.

Yes, but quite frankly that's RIP now and it's not clear to me what will happen in the North once it becomes clear that this is dead.

Note though the 2019 elections saw a backlash against both main 'sectarian' parties, in favour of those who defended the constitution as it was, the SDLP and the Alliance. The DUP's attempt to recreate Orange State 2.0 did not go down very well among middle class voters in Greater Belfast, which is interesting in itself.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yes, but quite frankly that's RIP now and it's not clear to me what will happen in the North once it becomes clear that this is dead.

Note though the 2019 elections saw a backlash against both main 'sectarian' parties, in favour of those who defended the constitution as it was, the SDLP and the Alliance. The DUP's attempt to recreate Orange State 2.0 did not go down very well among middle class voters in Greater Belfast, which is interesting in itself.

That's the thing: while the dream itself is quite dead for the time being, the idea that Northern Ireland ought to exist in a state of ambiguity isn't and there turns out to be a pretty large share of the electorate that has become very attached to the... er... anti-concept.

Anti-Politics, it's about escaping being Green or Orange, just wanting to grill, so to speak.

What's interesting on that point was until the end of the Troubles that sentiment was mostly Unionist, as the widespread opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 indicates, even if wasn't always Unionist Orthodoxy (i.e. integrationism was popular among this crowd as well). That clearly though is no longer the case.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Because this pre-supposes that Sunningdale was in any way sustainable at that moment in History.

No? The point about Sunningdale is that the Provisional IRA retreated from an armed campaign to unite Ireland by force to surrendering its arms and accepting a power sharing agreement under the British state that had been brokered with moderate nationalists and unionists decades ago. It is a curious "stalemate" where one side surrenders all of its objectives and weapons to the other side that keeps all of theirs.

(And yeah, the same applies to the loyalist groups post-GFA. They're mostly fat old men who call themselves 'community activists' and complain on TV/to Arlene Foster and can't do much else.)

This is not entirely true - a lot of those fat old men also deal drugs.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Anyway, my position on this is, as I have said before, that merger (a better term I think than 'unification') only happens if middle class Protestant voters decide that the current Northern Ireland is a non-viable entity. Right now, that's clearly not the case. In practice, the only entity that could bring about such an outcome is the British government who, despite having no real interest in trying to achieve this, seems to working fairly hard at the moment in trying to bring about such an outcome.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Does anyone think that if reunification became a truly imminent possibility (say a border poll is held that results in 54-46% FOR unification) the desire for unification in the Republic of Ireland would collapse?

No.