Abstract
With both the UK and Ireland heading to the polls within the next year,
Twenty years from now a United Ireland is more likely to exist than the United Kingdom. This is not just Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill’s view – it’s that of most people in Northern Ireland, in whose hands the continuation of the UK rests. If a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland assesses the majority there to be in favour of Irish unification, they are obliged to call a referendum to test it and, if successful, pass legislation to enact it. What is less clear are the grounds on which they will make that judgement.
The previous Shadow Secretary of State, Peter Kyle, indicated that a Labour government would set out the basis on which a ‘border poll’ would be called. Kyle’s successor, Hilary Benn, has so far been more coy, perhaps conscious that no one criteria would be a sure sign of a pro-unity majority. One such indicator could be if a nationalist party tops the polls in successive elections. Sinn Féin has already emerged as the largest in the 2022 Assembly elections (on 29 per cent) and in the 2023 local elections (31.9 per cent). The forthcoming Westminster election is viewed as the chance for a hat trick. Such poll-topping is not due to a surge in support for Sinn Féin so much as to the losses of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s wish to avoid a split in his party by returning the DUP to power-sharing in Stormont (after exercising a veto over it for two years) is inseparable from his determination to thwart Sinn Féin’s General Election ambitions.
Sinn Féin in Leinster House?
But it is not Sinn Féin’s performance in the North that will be the most critical for British-Irish relations in the near future. There is a strong prospect of Sinn Féin forming the next Irish Government, albeit perhaps in coalition. The republican party has maintained a considerable lead over all other parties in opinion polls for nearly three years: the gap between them is now typically around ten percentage points. In the 2020 General Election, when it had no such advantage in the polls, it won the most votes (24.5 per cent) but one fewer seat than Fianna Fail (due to the automatic re-election of the Speaker).
Sinn Féin taking power in Leinster House would be a severe jolt to the Irish State. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (and its forerunner Cumann na nGaedheal) have between them been in government every year since 1923, the year of the first election of the Irish Free State. Historically, Ireland’s official stance in key policy areas directly opposed that of Sinn Féin, with its Euroscepticism, socialism and association with violent republican struggle.
The 25 years since the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement have seen the party transformed. Its support for the peace process has been crucial, but the reasons for its recent success in the south have little to do with those north of the Irish border. The party uniquely attracts support from both the hard left and hard right, but there are many parallels between Sinn Féin’s rise and those of populist parties elsewhere in Europe. Its relentless focus on a single topic which successive governments have failed to address (housing), its party brand being more important than its choice of candidates, its strong and popular leader (Mary Lou McDonald), and its anti-establishment narrative are familiar traits in parties riding new waves of support in Europe today.
The party has made strategic efforts to assure observers that a Sinn Féin government would bring no revolutionary change to Ireland’s lucrative positioning vis-a-vis neoliberalism and globalisation. Nevertheless, major ‘known unknowns’ regarding its policies remain. It is not clear how the party would handle divisive domestic debates, such as immigration. And some will have serious consequences for the UK, including those relating to the EU, intergovernmental relations, and Northern Ireland. The fact that a new British government may itself be making major adjustments in these areas brings both risk and opportunity.
Consider its EU policy. Sinn Féin currently sits with the Left group (former GUE/NGL) in the European Parliament, but McDonald has not committed to returning MEPs there after the June elections. There is speculation that the party may instead seek to join the larger and more influential centre-left Socialists and Democrats group – the EU home for Labour Party MEPs until the UK’s exit in January 2020. If it were to do so, it would add to the considerable distance Sinn Féin has travelled in its EU-facing policy post-Brexit. Although its campaign in the 2016 referendum was less than full-blooded, new forms of collaboration subsequently emerged between Sinn Féin politicians and those from other parties, north and south. They shared a common concern to preserve the benefits of the 1998 Agreement despite the disturbance caused by Brexit to the conditions in which the agreement was created.
At the same time, Sinn Féin also saw an opportunity. Ireland’s vulnerability to the unintended consequences of British decisions was exposed by Brexit, and pro-unification narratives and initiatives not only gained new momentum but also new salience. Genuine fears about a hard Irish border and apparent English insouciance in causing it helped intensify nationalist sentiment alongside a new pro-Europeanism among potential Sinn Féin voters. The likes of Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson and Lord Frost became, in effect, recruiters to the Irish nationalist cause in some Northern Ireland constituencies.
Labour in London
If Labour secures victory in the UK General Election and fulfils its promise to pursue a closer relationship with the European Union, this will have two obvious consequences for Northern Ireland’s politics. It will reduce the difficulty for Northern Ireland navigating the choppy waters between a hard British Brexit and its own alignment with a bulk of EU rules (under the Protocol/Windsor Framework). The second is that the Brexit-related discourse of the British government will be less likely to scare middle-ground Remainers in Northern Ireland away from the pro-Union camp. The post-Brexit rise in expectations of Irish unity has been considerably steeper than the rise in support for it. Warmer, more stable UK-EU relations could soften feelings of alienation and distrust of the British government in Northern Ireland – such sentiments have contributed to a sense of doom for the UK Union even among those who would support its continuation.
More recently, the government’s decision to engage unilaterally with the DUP over the Protocol/Windsor Framework fall-out further contravened the practice and principles of intergovernmentalism and multi-party inclusion. They have set an unfortunate precedent.
But the real test for Northern Ireland’s place in the Union will come long before any border poll. The 1998 Agreement has functioned on the working assumption that the parties in government in the UK and Ireland are not the same as those sharing power in Northern Ireland. This has meant that while there may be kinship ideologies between the British and Irish states and unionism and nationalism respectively, the British-Irish intergovernmental relationship was generally unmuddied by party politics. Both governments could claim a certain degree of ‘remove’ from the political dynamics of the region, if not neutrality. Sinn Féin in government in Dublin would completely up end this.
This sense of ‘remove’ between British and Irish politics and Northern Ireland has, however, been eroded in recent times. The Conservative Party’s confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP after the 2017 election revealed the dangers of overt bias. More recently, the government’s decision to engage unilaterally with the DUP over the Protocol/Windsor Framework fall-out further contravened the practice and principles of intergovernmentalism and multi-party inclusion. They have set an unfortunate precedent. It will be very difficult now for the British to complain about an Irish government’s sidebar connections with Sinn Féin, let alone to manage the consequences. Many of the unwritten rules about how to approach peace in Northern Ireland will not only be ignored but become quite impossible.
The principles of democracy
So, the norms and assumptions in British-Irish relations will be shaken. Where will firm ground be found? Perhaps those taking new office in Dail Eireann and Westminster might search out the British-Irish Agreement that was made in April 1998. In it the two governments stated their ‘total commitment to the principles of democracy’ and ‘commitment to the principles of partnership, equality and mutual respect’. Such principles are needed more than ever in Northern Ireland and are under severe pressure across Europe. Whichever the parties in the two governments, and however new the challenges they face, a recommitment to such principles is a good place from which to meet the unknown.
Footnotes
Katy Hayward is Professor of Political Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast.