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The United Kingdom had a general election which of course meant election time for Northern Ireland. There however the hustings are occupied not by Tories, liberals or labourites but all the varied and colourful flora and fauna indigenous to this corner of the Island of Ireland.
In total eighteen seats were up for grabs and the results read seven for Sinn Fein, five for the Democratic Unionists, two for the SDLP, and one each for Ulster Unionists, Traditional Unionist Voice, an Independent Unionist and the Alliance party. For the first time in its history Sinn Fein, a nationalist all Ireland party is the largest Northern Irish party in Westminster. Or it would be if Sinn Fein took its seats there rather than holding to its historic abstentionist position. Sinn Fein MPs do not take their seats but they do take their salary, which is something at least.
This represents an electoral trifecta for Sinn Fein having previously come in first in local government elections and elections to Stormont, the seat of Northern Ireland’s regional assembly. On foot of this the subject of a border poll has again raised this time with a labour secretary of state in office. The decision to hold a referendum on Irish Unity is at the discretion of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland however there has been no indication than there has been any movement towards a poll with the change of government in Westminster.
While Sinn Fein have become the largest party at Westminster it is more on the back of the failure of Unionists to present unified front and the loss of three seat by the DUP, the largest of the unionist parties which was campaigning in the shadow of the arrest of its former leader on charges of historic sexual abuse. If we look to share of the vote rather than seats the combined vote share for Sinn Féin and the other main nationalist group, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), has remained “more or less steady” at about 40% since the Good Friday Agreement. Marie Coleman, a professor of 20th century Irish history at Queen’s University Belfast said “Some of Sinn Fein’s success would appear to come from nationalist voters veering more towards Sinn Féin and away from the SDLP,” and regarding the likelihood of the Secretary of State calling a border poll she added
“You’d need more than just the result of one general election – you’d need a pattern of elections,” she said.
“You’d need more just than just having the most seats – you’d need a majority of seats.
“But you would also need to look at the vote share for the two main nationalist parties which want a united Ireland.
“So it’s very hard to see yet that the circumstances which would lead a secretary of state call a border poll are there.”
For Sinn Fein the problem it has to deal with going forward is one that at the outbreak of the troubles would not have been foreseen. It must now convince not just the Protestant/Unionist community but also the many in the Catholic/Nationalist community, and it is always important to remember that these religious denominators have never been perfectly contiguous with the political identities of Northerners. Still for a long time there was a sense in the North that demography was destiny. Historically while Catholics were in the minority they had larger families and eventually nationalists thoughts they would become the majority. In fact due to other factors this day persistently refused to dawn. Then in 2022 the census figures from 2021 were published, The proportion of the resident population which is either Catholic or brought up Catholic is 45.7% compared to 43.48% Protestant. The previous census, in 2011, found that 45.1% of the population were Catholic or brought up Catholic. It found 48.4% were from a Protestant or other Christian background.
For Irish Unity Nationalists like Sinn Fein there was however as sting in the tail. In terms of national identity, 31.9% said they had a British-only identity, while 29.1% said Irish-only and 19.8% said Northern Irish-only.
Compared with the previous census in 2011, the proportion of people with a British-only identity has decreased. Meanwhile 8% of people said they were both British and Northern Irish – up from 6.2% in 2011. While the demographics shape of the population is clear and the proportion of the population that is at least culturally catholic will only increase there has been a degree of decoupling of national and religious identity. Or better perhaps there has been a growth especially amongst younger people of a sense of being Irish or British yes, but principally being Northern Irish. It is unsurprising that over four generations of its existence even in unfortunate circumstances that the children born there would develop a sense of being of the place.
Whatever the proximate causes of the changes in old identities and the evolution of new ones it presents United Ireland advocates with a reality and a challenge. The reality is that all the polling suggests that a referendum held today in Northern Ireland on Unity would be rejected. The challenge is to bring on board not just unionists for whom their primary identity is British but those for whom the “Wee Six” is home and are happy to leave the status quo in place.
It is hard to know if Sinn Fein is actually serious about demanding a referendum or if this is a pro forma performance necessary for the activists on the ground to hear and be reassured by. Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has pointed out that anyone seriously interested in a United Ireland needs to work out the question to ask the people before rushing headlong into a border poll. What would the legal constitutional and political framework of a United Ireland look like? What would the flag be, the anthem, the language etc.? It would take ten years of careful preparation between Dublin Belfast London and Brussels to have the legal and governmental structures in place to facilitate a smooth transition. In any case the worst scenario could be that in the near future a border poll might pass, but only just.
The Smokey Bacon Border.
In one of the biggest upsets of election night Ian Paisley Jr lost his seat in North Antrim to Jim Allister of Traditional Unionist Voice who had a majority of 450 votes. A constituency that has returned a Unionist every lection since its creation in 1885 it had been represented by a member of the Paisley family for 54 years.
In 1970 Rev Ian Paisley was elected for the Protestant Unionist Party, which was a forerunner of the Democratic Unionist Party also founded by the Reverend Paisley. Dr Paisley was the founder of the Free Presbyterian Church and would become one of the most polarising figures in Northern Politics. He was very much in the Not an Inch tradition of Ulster Unionism and savagely critical of any movement which he felt compromised the integrity of the Union or diluted the Britishness of Northern Ireland. He was constantly critical of the governing Official Unionist Party and its brand of “Big House Unionism” whose leaders were drawn from the landed gentry and aristocracy.
Having spent the large part of his political life as a mordant critic on the sideline the period post the Good Friday agreement saw his political fortunes transformed. By 2004 his DUP had become the largest party in the province and in 2006 he co-signed the St Andrews Agreement to join in a power sharing government with Sinn Fein. As the DUP had consumed Official Unionism, Sinn Fein had taken support from the moderate SDLP. Dr Paisley then became First Minister of Northern Ireland. To observers of Northern politics the sight of Dr Paisley consorting with ex IRA man, Martin McGuinness was beyond dis-concerting. Indeed so good apparently was their relationship that they garnered the soubriquet “the chuckle brothers”.
His son succeeded him in the constituency of North Antrim in the general lection of 2010. The man that would eventually take his seat Jim Allister had departed from the DUP in protest over the signing of the St Andrews Agreement and going into a power sharing government with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA. Allister in 2024 ran on a ticket that would have been very familiar to Ian Paisley Snr. attacking the fudging British sovereignty implicit in the Windsor agreement. His platform was an attack on the Smokey Bacon Border.
Post Brexit the big question that occupied mind in these islands was what to do with Northern Ireland. How could the introduction of a hard border be avoided. How could we maintain a common travel area. The response to this was the Windsor Framework which adjusts the operation of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol. However under the framework Northern Irish crisp makers will be subject to an EU ban on smoke flavourings because of post-Brexit trading arrangements that could create a “smoky bacon border” with Britain.
Jim Allister newly elected MP for North Antrim and leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, said: “It all flows, of course, from the abandonment of sovereignty over many facets of Northern Ireland’s economic life to the EU through the iniquitous protocol. “A protocol which carries the absurdity of this situation even further in that smoky bacon crisps produced in GB can come to NI, but we cannot produce them here.”
What no one can say, what no one wants to say, is that this particular Gordian knot may be possible to unpick. When the Good Friday Agreement was fashioned and all the subsequent accords addenda protocols and codicils were added it was in a specific legal context. Both the Republic and the UK were members of the EU and of a common travel area. It seems very unlikely that in 1997 Mo Mowlan or Tony Blair ever wondered out loud “but what if we leave the EU?”. It just maybe that we are in a have or eat cake scenario and the only solution is that suggested by an Irish politician closely connected to the original peace process; everyone pretends that they got what they wanted, everyone declares victory and we move on.
The London Dublin Reset
The word that all are using in the Belfast Dublin London triangle is Reset. The election of Starmer and the labour party is an opportunity to reset relations between the island neighbours that have of late been rather frayed and fractious.
What they are not saying is that it is not just the arrival of Keir Starmer that will facilitate a new warmer relationship but also the elevation of Simon Harris or rather the departure of Leo Varadker. A Tory minster with long experience of negotiation with Dublin as official and politician confided that Leo was widely seen as the most hostile anti British minister and Taoiseach that Whitehall had seen in more than a generation. One official recalled that even if there had been heated disagreement during the working day that once pens were put away relationships were cordial and convivial but Leo would rarely stay after work hours and always gave the impression of a man who wanted to be elsewhere with other people.
It is also undoubtedly true that the Brexit process place severe strains on Dublin London relations. Many in the Tory Party still feel more than a little aggrieved by the behaviour not just of Leo but also Simon Coveny during the fraught premiership of Teresa May. It was felt that on several occasions that commentary from both gentlemen seriously undermined the then Prime Minister in her attempts to get a deal through the common. What especially galled was that the commentary seemed to come not to gain some political capital at home or in Brussels but simply from some kind of malicious pleasure in queering her pitch. This perception, justified or not, did very deep damage to the historic good will broadly felt in the Conservative Party towards Ireland.
Keir Starmer comes to the table it is hoped with none of this animus and largely free from the performative Unionism that is expected of a leader of the Tory Party. He has an unusual level of experience of Northern Irish politics and culture from the five years he spent as human rights advisor the Police Service of Northern Ireland which established to replace the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Patrick McGuire in a piece in the Time lists both his personal connections with Ireland and the large Irish contingent of close advisors he has about him. All wish him well but the wise words of that classic work of English history, 1066 and All That, should be remembered ‘Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the question.’