Speaking on BBC Northern Ireland recently, Leo Varadkar said that the aspiration for a united Ireland was a legitimate one and supported by his party, but that a Border poll wouldn’t be “appropriate or right at this time [because] it would be divisive and defeated”. But then he followed it up with this: “I do think one thing we should do is clarify the tests for when a Border poll can and should happen. It doesn’t really clearly say how the test is applied. Is the Secretary of State supposed to look at Assembly election results, is it opinion poll — what is it?”
Later on in the interview he touched upon the numbers, arguing that a 50-per-cent-plus-one outcome was not desirable. “You’d end up having a very large minority of people being brought into a united Ireland they didn’t want to be part of. What I would like to try and achieve is as big a majority as possible.”
That sounds very much like a man who has a Border poll on his mind and has already given considerable thought to the timing, circumstances and mechanisms involved. Indeed, I’m reminded of former UK prime minister David Cameron’s decision to include the promise of an EU referendum in the Conservative’s 2015 manifesto because he wanted to prevent the drift of votes to Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party. Cameron won an unexpected majority on the back of that promise, yet a year later he was forced from office when the referendum delivered the result he didn’t want.
I wonder if both Varadkar and Micheál Martin will consider doing something similar to Cameron in their next manifestos: in other words, holding out the prospect of a Border poll (or even just putting the structures in place) to stop the steady drip-drip-drip rise in Sinn Féin’s polling figures? The Coalition already has a Shared Island Unit in place and I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t — and fairly soon — collective support for a more specifically focused Citizens’ Assembly to debate the myriad issues around potential unity. Again, I’d be similarly surprised if substantial groundwork wasn’t already under way in the preparation of some sort of draft White Paper on the requirements and consequences of a “new” Ireland.
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With Sinn Féin, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (which has the most to lose from Sinn Féin’s ongoing rise) already focused on an eventual poll (and they’ve all accepted that one is inevitable, by the way) it is clear that the issue isn’t going to go away. It’s on the political/constitutional agenda and it’s going to stay there. Also, the present hiatus with the Northern Ireland Assembly/Executive — which hasn’t functioned properly since February 9th, and may not be rebootable before June 2023, if at all — will, I think, push increasing numbers of soft nationalists away from devolution and towards a Border poll.
The primary root of the hiatus is the DUP’s refusal to rejoin the Executive until its problems with the Northern Ireland protocol have been resolved. That process was already destined to be lengthy (with no guarantee the DUP will get enough of what it’s currently demanding), but the latest chaos caused by Boris Johnson’s resignation and the need to replace him has added another few months — possibly taking us into the autumn of 2023. But a growing section of nationalism believes that having to share an executive with a Sinn Féin first minister is even more of a problem for the DUP and loyalism than the protocol. It is a view which some small-u unionists, who have drifted to the centrist and growing Alliance Party, share: which is why a Border poll looks like an increasingly attractive option.
In 1998 there was a general view that the Border poll provided for in the Belfast Agreement would be a “very long time coming”. But a number of circumstances — shifting demographics, the rise of Sinn Féin, unionism’s loss of majority status in the Assembly and the fallout from Brexit being the primary ones — have combined to bring a possible poll much closer. Which explains why there is now so much interest, on both sides of the Border, in the terms and conditions of the poll.
What does seem certain is that the debate on unity and the push for a Border poll, sooner rather than later, will intensify (irrespective of the fate of the NI Protocol Bill). Those who want unity are marshalling their arguments and lobbying across Ireland, the UK (especially Scotland), the EU and the US. They are amassing funds and “friends”. The entire political/electoral establishment in the South will soon be focused on the issue, too. They are ready for that poll — whenever it comes.
But what of unionism in Northern Ireland? Who can it even rely on outside its own ranks? I wrote this in The Irish Times on December 27th, 2018, in another piece about a potential Border poll: “This is not 1912, 1974 or 1985. They [unionists] do not have a sizeable majority to shore them up. They cannot take it for granted that a Conservative government — even with another leader — will prioritise the concerns of their interests over broader national interests. Put bluntly, they need less grandstanding and red lines and more attention paid to the people in their own electoral backyard — those people required to sustain the union.”
Since then, a new Conservative leader and prime minister dumped the protocol on them and undermined their sense of identity. They have no idea what another new leader and prime minister — due in a few weeks — could dump upon them. That’s why they must be prepared for a Border poll.
Alex Kane is a commentator based in Belfast. He was formerly director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party