Sir, – Michael McDowell is worryingly complacent in stating that “a united Ireland is not a short-term possibility” (“Unionists have nothing to lose from making the North succeed economically”, Opinion & Analysis, May 24th).
The statistics from the recent local government elections in Northern Ireland are remarkable.
If one tracks independent candidates to “nationalist”, “unionist” or “other”, the combined nationalist vote at is 42.4 per cent, and if one includes the pro-unity far-left People Before Profit party, this rises to 43.5 per cent.
Michael McDowell in his analysis only references back to the Assembly elections in 2022, whereas to really understand the pace of change, one has to look back further.
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For instance, the unionist vote has fallen by nearly 10 percentage points in six years, from 49.1 per cent in 2017 to 39.35 per cent today. Furthermore, in the key “swing” council, namely Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council, in the 2014 local government elections, the unionists won 27 seats, whereas the nationalists won 14, whereas less than 10 years later, the unionists have fallen to 21 seats and the nationalists have risen to 16 seats. It would appear prudent for all interested parties to now begin to prepare for a border poll that looks inevitable at some point in the next 10 to 20 years. – Yours, etc,
JOSEPH G O’HANLON,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.