In the last Irish presidential debate on RTE back in 2011 the host, Pat Kenny, said ‘and now we have a question from Emma Louise’ – no last name given – and she came out with a cracker.
Addressing Martin McGuinness she asked: “As a young Irish person I am curious as to why you come down to this country with all your baggage, your controversy and how you think you can represent me?”
You could see McGuinness, who was standing as the Sinn Fein candidate, neither liked the tone nor the attitude behind the question.
“I come from Derry and Derry is as Irish as Cork’ he replied tersely to a warm round of applause from at least a certain section of the audience.
It was clearly the use of the term ‘this country’ that rattled him.
As I have said in the past I have been aware for quite some time four of the six counties in his part of the world have now got nationalist majorities but there was a guy claiming on social media the other night that unionists no longer have a majority in any of the counties that comprise Northern Ireland.
I don’t know if that is factually correct but it is clear we have already entered a whole new political landscape.
I have also said this before - five years ago the union or unity debate was never a topic I heard discussed, now it’s something that crops up almost on a daily basis.
And it’s a debate that’s likely to get more heated in the months and years ahead.
Even saying it’s a real issue these days is not appreciated in certain quarters. About a fortnight ago the Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis, publicly chided Fine Gael leader, Leo Varadkar for stating he aspires to see a ‘united Ireland in my lifetime.”
Lewis suggested the comments were ‘unhelpful’ in the current climate.
What was really odd was only a few days earlier he had described himself as ‘unapologetically pro-union and not neutral on Northern Ireland.”
Needless to say there was those on the nationalist side who were more than anxious to publicly point out the hypocrisy of this position - is it all right for unionists and British politicians to plead the case for the union but ‘inflammatory’ when nationalists and Dublin politicians state the case for unity?
About twenty years ago a young girl from the former East Germany spent a weekend with my family.
One night we got talking and she had an interesting take on German unification back in 1990. The economic impact was severe in that the unemployment rate in what had been the most successful economy in Europe until then almost doubled and the GDP growth barely rose above 1% a year for a decade. Ordinary German workers faced higher taxes and pay rises were almost unheard of.
There was real resentment about that.
Because of all this she said East Germans felt, or were made to feel, very unwelcome in the new unified State.
I would suggest the evidence is overwhelming that partition has failed totally in the north but worked wonderfully well in the south.
So, wouldn’t it be the irony of ironies if a Border Poll was called and it was the south which vetoed unification not unionists in the north?
There are a lot of Emma-Louises out there, believe me.
