A Historic Northern Ireland Election, But the U.K. Remains Intact

Sinn Fein believes that Northern Ireland as an entity should be wiped from the map. It wants a united island of Ireland, ruled from Dublin. 

Despite the historic symbolism of Sinn Fein’s victory, the result does not sound the death knell of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the province in 1998 after the 30 years of the violent “Troubles,” also holds — if uneasily.

It used to be said of the Irish economy, as it lurched from boom to bust and back again, that the situation was “catastrophic but not serious.”  Today, the state of the Union in Northern Ireland is catastrophic, but not yet seriously under threat. 

Even Sinn Fein’s triumphant Stormont leader, Michelle O’Neill, has downplayed discussion of a referendum on Irish reunification. Under the peace agreement, the British government alone can call a border poll if it believes there is a majority for it in the province.

No such majority exists. The Unionist vote was split between several parties in the election, while the non-aligned Alliance party made significant gains. The real danger is that if the second-placed Democratic Unionist party (DUP) refuses to serve under a Sinn Fein first minister, there will be no devolved government but direct rule from London.

Yet on the face of it, all the ingredients for Irish reunification would seem to be in place. In Northern Ireland, the Catholic population (which has a nationalist majority) is growing, and Brexit, the flagship policy of the mistrusted Tory government in London, was overwhelmingly rejected by the province’s voters.

The DUP has made an infernal mess of Brexit too. First, it backed Brexit six years ago in the referendum, then it rejected every compromise departure deal with Brussels. Eventually, it got an agreement inimical to its interests, negotiated by Boris Johnson. Under the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a customs barrier was established between the province and the British mainland. That was the price for keeping the border with the Irish republic open, along with access to Europe’s single market for goods. 

An unloved east-west border in the sea was thereby added to the already disputed north-south one on land.

Despite these blunders, however, nationalist support in Northern Ireland for immediate Irish reunification has only marginally increased over the last 20 years — from 27% to 30%. Another third of the population considers itself British, while a similar proportion is unaligned Northern Irish.

Not all Catholics are inclined to vote for Irish reunification either. When opinion poll respondents are told that leaving the U.K. would mean higher taxes to replace 10 billion pounds ($12.3 billion) in subsidies from London, support for reunification drops to 11%. Voters would prefer to keep the U.K. “free” (taxpayer-funded) National Health Service and social security payments. Pro-unity sentiment also halves across the border in the Irish republic when the financial implications are pointed out. 

In the election, Northern Ireland’s voters were more concerned with the cost-of-living crisis and the state of public services than the state of the Union. Sinn Fein wisely stuck to bread-and-butter issues throughout the campaign.

This strategy echoes Sinn Fein’s successful policy platform in the Irish republic where it operates as a left-wing protest party. Its all-Ireland leader, Mary Lou McDonald, was never a member of the IRA and Sinn Fein has a 10-point lead in the polls, at 33%, over the traditional ruling parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Younger voters have flocked to it (almost 46% of those aged between 18 and 34), as they have to a lesser extent in the north where Sinn Fein has abandoned Catholic dogma on abortion and LGBT rights.

But although Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries have gone quiet, they haven’t entirely gone away. The security forces believe in “the continuing existence and cohesion” of an IRA command structure with shadowy links to Sinn Fein. MI5, the U.K.’s domestic intelligence service, works to thwart terrorist plots by dissident republican and Protestant gangs who make ends meet by drug dealing. 

Sectarian tensions persist, too. Ten years after the Berlin Wall was torn down, physical barriers or “peace lines” were still being erected by popular demand to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods. 

In Northern Ireland, it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. But the protocol has acted as a dog whistle for hardline Unionist opinion. Many British firms gave up delivering goods to the Northern Irish market when checks became onerous, and Unionists began to fear a covert conspiracy to cut economic links with Britain. In February, as its supporters began to defect to splinter Unionist parties, the DUP quit the power-sharing executive in protest and collapsed it.

Johnson’s government also dislikes the overzealous application of customs rules by the European Union. In recent months, the prime minister has threatened to abandon the protocol unilaterally or legislate to change it if Brussels does not show more flexibility. President Emmanuel Macron of France, for one, looks prepared to call the prime minister’s bluff. The prospect of a trade war between Britain and Brussels while a real war rages on the other side of the continent in Ukraine has prompted wiser heads in London to step back from the brink.

It is absurd that the U.K. and the EU cannot find a workable compromise on the border to keep the peace. “No surrender” is the watchword of obstinate Northern Irish Unionists. London and Brussels should know better.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Martin Ivens was editor of the Sunday Times from 2013 to 2020 and was formerly its chief political commentator. He is a director of the Times Newspapers board.

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