Beginning of the End of Northern Ireland?

[EastAnglianLefty]

The unionists are already not a majority in the population at large, because a substantial and growing share of the population associate with neither side. But that doesn't mean that the neithers from unionist backgrounds are likely to support reunification in any substantial numbers and there isn't going to be a 50%+1 referendum anyway. The long-term weakness of both blocs is likely to be more significant than the relative balance between the two.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Worth noting that Belfast North was the only seat where SF increased its vote in 2019, and that was with a candidate deliberately chosen not to repel soft nationalists.

[EastAnglianLefty]

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.

[EastAnglianLefty]

It's also interesting that this wish for moderation in politics doesn't come with any obvious popular desire for more mixed housing developments or integrated schools - a lot of people backing the SDLP or Alliance are nominally in favour of these things, but they're generally in favour of them happening without any personal cost to them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Yes, it's certainly not surprising, but the very fact that there are large groups of voters whose basic wish is for Northern Ireland to be normal enough for them to not pay attention means that it's less likely there will be a groundswell of support for any measures to make that actually happen.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Zero. Aside from anything else, if there was a border poll which voted for reunification, Belfast would be amongst the areas voting yes.

[EastAnglianLefty]

As someone who hasn't followed the politics of the British Isles closely, would it be possible for NI to leave the UK without Irish reunification? I.e. Northern Ireland would become an independent state. It would be a small state, but far from the smallest, and independence could allow a slow evolution over time from the status quo toward eventual reunification (or not).

In theory yes, but the only thing keeping NI economy from turning into Greece are transfer payments from the rest of the UK. Historically, there was also the small matter that the only thing keeping the place from descending into a civil f****** war was the presence of British Army and London government being there to intervene (indeed, ruling NI directly) in case the Unionist majority decided to go full on fascist. That might seem irrelevant today, but sectarian resentments plus an economy in the gutter is not a good combination.

Greece is being absurdly generous. The Donbass is probably nearer the mark.

[EastAnglianLefty]

If you consider the demographics of the unionist hard-core, they're much less likely to emigrate than more moderate unionists. Anecdotally, the Alliance would probably do a lot better if Northern Irish university students at GB universities were more likely to return home after graduating than they are.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This is going to be a hugely hot and controversial take, but in a way I think that the Good Friday Agreement was a mistake. You do not negotiate with terrorists. It would have been vastly preferrable for the IRA to have been utterly crushed than for the GFA to happen.

Except the GFA was the defeat of the IRA. It was more or less what the UK government had agreed to at Sunningdale in 1973, 25 years previously. The IRA armed campaign during the intervening 25 years was to force a united Ireland by collapsing the British state in Northern Ireland militarily; the reason Adams, McGuinness and co. abandoned the armed campaign was because they saw that was impossible to achieve. So the Provisional IRA decommissioned and went into electoral politics.

Ok, I guess I'll slightly change that to "unconditional surrender from the IRA" (as opposed to the "negotiated treaty" that was the GFA)

It was unionists, not the IRA, that caused the failure of Sunningdale
But my point is that they surrendered in exchange for an agreement that the British government had already made with nationalists and moderate unionists decades ago...

What relevance does that have to the fact that Provisional IRA acceptance of the GFA and its decommissioning was an admission of defeat?

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

The 25 years do make a difference, and by then the IRA was perhaps tired but not defeated, not in the slightest. They wrote the textbook on urban insurgency (not condoning this nor their horrific terrorist acts in Britain) and forced a stalemate against a pretty strong state with experience in counter-insurgency from their colonial past (although that turned out to be a burden when dealing with the initial Irish Civil Rights movement).

Conditions, especially globally, were united for "Sunningdale" to become acceptable again, to both sides.

It was also mainly to point out to tack50 that Unionists are not innocent in this whole process, no matter how much he wants to project his Spanish centralism (another counter-productive ideology that is also radicalising the Catalan and Basque movements faster) on the conflict.

By the mid-1990s, the upper ranks of the IRA were infested with informers. The writing was on the wall.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Remaining part of the UK still has a ten point lead. Support for Irish unity is higher than in most recent polls, but the drop in support for the union is not statistically significant. This is at most an argument that a border poll in two decades time might be close.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Remaining part of the UK still has a ten point lead. Support for Irish unity is higher than in most recent polls, but the drop in support for the union is not statistically significant. This is at most an argument that a border poll in two decades time might be close.

that's ignoring demographic change (UI leads among voters under 45 and pensioners are the most unionist) and that the poll has 52% saying they aspire to a UI at some point in the future (given a point over 10 years in the future) with only 44% saying they would never support leaving the UK.

It very much is not ignoring demographic change - that is the reason it might be close in two decades time, even if it isn't right now.

An "aspiration" towards a united Ireland isn't particularly meaningful, because it's hard to say what that might mean in practice - is that a "I'd like it, but it'll never happen", is it a theoretical maximum for support for a UI, is it a "we can look at that once we've fixed public services"? The word can bear any of those interpretations, without everybody agreeing meaning all of them.

If polls start showing support for a UI rising above 45%, it'll become a much more contentious issue. Right now it's just a way for politicians on both sides to rally their base and a displacement activity to avoid engaging with their day jobs.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Remaining part of the UK still has a ten point lead. Support for Irish unity is higher than in most recent polls, but the drop in support for the union is not statistically significant. This is at most an argument that a border poll in two decades time might be close.

that's ignoring demographic change (UI leads among voters under 45 and pensioners are the most unionist) and that the poll has 52% saying they aspire to a UI at some point in the future (given a point over 10 years in the future) with only 44% saying they would never support leaving the UK.

It very much is not ignoring demographic change - that is the reason it might be close in two decades time, even if it isn't right now.

An "aspiration" towards a united Ireland isn't particularly meaningful, because it's hard to say what that might mean in practice - is that a "I'd like it, but it'll never happen", is it a theoretical maximum for support for a UI, is it a "we can look at that once we've fixed public services"? The word can bear any of those interpretations, without everybody agreeing meaning all of them.

If polls start showing support for a UI rising above 45%, it'll become a much more contentious issue. Right now it's just a way for politicians on both sides to rally their base and a displacement activity to avoid engaging with their day jobs.

assuming young people getting the vote during the next two decades would be at least as pro-UI as the youngest category in this poll and most who are 65+ now would be dead it'll result in a clear pro-UI majority - and those seem to be reasonable assumptions.

There is a demographic difference between the oldest generations (who are considerably more Protestant than NI as a whole) and the younger generations. However, there long ago stopped being any significant difference in birthrates between the Protestant and Catholic communities so the trend hasn't continued (hence why there is a Catholic plurality but nobody expects that to become a majority any longer.)

With that necessary codicil, yes, if you remove the oldest generation then there is a plurality for a UI - though not one that's clear, because in every other age group the "Don't Knows" are a larger group than the lead in either direction.

But there isn't one today, because for all that the Northern Irish NHS is not in a good shape, today's over-65s are still a decent share of the electorate and will be for a while yet. So you seem to be arguing against something I'm not saying.

I'm not saying that there couldn't be a lead for the UI side in future. I am saying we are not there yet, nor are we likely to be until at least the 2040s on current trajectories.

[EastAnglianLefty]

There are two questions in terms of how a UI would be implemented. The one that's often thought about is in terms of governance arrangements, loser's consent and the management of security issues. The other one is what the pitch is in terms of what we get if we vote for UI - does the Northern Irish NHS continue, how are the education systems integrated with one another, what about pensions? This is also likely to be somewhat effected but who is in power in Dublin at the time of a Border Poll.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Reading between the lines, what the authors mean by "raising productivity" is firing a lot of public sector workers. I see downsides to this approach.