The Irish Times is unimpressed with a surprise decision by Ireland’s prime minister, Enda Kenny, to reiterate his call for a poll on the future status of Northern Ireland.
In a stinging editorial, the paper referred on Wednesday to Kenny’s suggestion as a “pointless refloating” of the idea, seeing it as little more than “a cynical chance” by the leader of the Fine Gael party “to steal Sinn Féin’s nationalist colours.”
It was a reference to the fact that, immediately after the EU referendum (which returned a remain majority in Northern Ireland), Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness declared that the result intensified the case for a poll.
“Kenny must know it will not go anywhere,” said the Irish Times. He “has shot himself in the foot with, no doubt, a decommissioned Sinn Féin blunderbuss.”
So, as far as the paper is concerned, Kenny was merely playing politics. His remarks were seen by an Irish Independent writer as a way of opening the EU’s eyes to the problems now facing Ireland.
In raising the matter, Kenny will also have been aware that Brexit has become a major concern and talking point among the Irish people.
Having been in Donegal continuously since 23 June, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked about the issue. Main question: will it mean the restoration of a border between the Republic and the north?
No-one can imagine it, although plenty in this border county can remember both the long-gone customs posts and the British army checkpoints. The peace process has since eradicated all sense of a border.
The only way you can tell you have crossed from one jurisdiction to the other is the change in road signs from mph to kph, or vice versa.
Kenny’s notion of there being an opportunity to reunite Ireland was based on a provision in the 1998 Belfast Agreement that allows the secretary of state (now James Brokenshire) to trigger a poll within Northern Ireland.
To do so, the minister would need evidence that “a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the UK and form part of a united Ireland.”
There is, however, precious little such evidence at present. Virtually all unionists, who still form a majority, remain committed to the UK link. And even though I am a Sinn Féin supporter and favour unification, I have to concede that opinion polls show plenty of nationalists would vote against.
The major unionist party, the DUP, is unwilling to enter into formal talks with the Republic about post-Brexit arrangements across the island. Its leader, and first minister, Arlene Foster (who advocated an EU leave vote), has made that abundantly clear.
But that’s not to say that the issue will slip quietly by. As Ian McBride argued in Wednesday’s Guardian, Brexit undermines the spirit of the Belfast Agreement: “England’s unilateral declaration of independence means that the border will dominate politics again.” He wrote:
“First, the agreement clearly envisaged that Northern Ireland’s future constitutional arrangements would be worked out in the context of continuing partnership between the north and the south.
To remove Northern Ireland from Europe without its consent is not only morally wrong and politically risky; it is also a rejection of the fundamental bilateralism of the peace process.
Second, the all-Ireland dimension of the Belfast agreement was fundamental to securing the support of nationalists. The republic felt able to revise its constitution, recognising fully the legitimacy of partition for the first time.”
Those are the facts, but it doesn’t mean they will engender action. There is plenty of room for political fudge in the short term while, in the long-term, the determining factor will surely be the economic, as distinct from political, effect of Brexit.
In truth, as newspaper commentators both north and south of the border have reflected in a variety of speculative pieces, no-one can really determine Brexit’s outcome. But, day by day, in pubs, shops and in the street, I note that it makes for a much more interesting conversation opener than the weather...
