I have a lot of time for Neale Richmond, but honestly, what do we think the outcome will be, here?
I am calling for the establishment of an all-party Special Oireachtas Committee to be established to look at the challenges and opportunities that Irish Unity presents. 1/ pic.twitter.com/CnKZ4RPLr0
— Neale Richmond (@nealerichmond) May 18, 2022
“Brexit has fundamentally changed the tone of debate when it comes to Irish unity”, he says, arguing that it is “conceivable” that a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland could call a border poll within the next decade, and that it is therefore the Irish Government’s “duty” to be best prepared for a possible unification with Northern Ireland. Fact check: Some of that is true, some of it is false.
Is it true, for example, that Brexit has “changed the tone of the debate”? That’s no better than arguable: Certainly, it has given nationalists a new argument to make. At the same time, though, it hasn’t translated into a higher overall share of the vote for Northern Irish nationalist parties. The core problem remains the same: If you want Irish Unity, you need to convince a majority of the population in Northern Ireland that Irish Unity is preferable to remaining part of Britain. There are no signs that any such thing has happened.
It is also true that the Government has a duty to be prepared for unity – but only insofar as it has a duty to be prepared for all reasonably possible scenarios. It has a duty to be prepared for the outbreak of nuclear war between Russia and NATO, too – though we don’t see much urgency there. Perhaps the lessons of the iodine tablet fiasco have been learned.
Mostly, though, one might wonder what such a committee could possibly talk about that has not been endlessly talked about before?
A new national anthem? A new national flag? Commonwealth membership? Most of those would probably be rejected by the voters, a troublingly high number of whom – whether we approve or not – appear to hold to the old view that if there’s a United Ireland, unionists can like it, or leave.
That’s the big problem with debates about Irish unity in the republic: They ignore the central problem. You can’t make Unionists feel “at home” in a United Ireland, or a New Ireland, or an Agreed Ireland, or whatever we’re calling it this week. You can’t do it, because it wouldn’t be “home” for them, no matter what flag is on the flagpost. As always, it’s better to ask these questions in reverse, to get a sense of how ridiculous they are:
Suppose, for example, that Boris Johnson established a committee in Westminster to examine ways to make people in the Republic feel more at home with a view to re-admitting the 26 counties to the Union. Suppose he said “Britain could join the EU, and integrate the Irish tricolour into the flag, and put the Irish language on roadsigns, and keep the Dáil as a devolved Government, and apologise for the famine, and recognise Irish as a legitimate identity within the United Kingdom”.
Would that win you over? Would you feel better about giving up 1916, and all that?
If the answer is, as I suspect, “no” – then why would we think that people who celebrate July 12th every year and still fly Dutch flags alongside the Union flag in parts of Antrim would suddenly feel more comfortable in a United Ireland as a result of the deliberations of a committee?
All this is, in any case, foolish for Fine Gael. They will never be – no matter how hard they try – the party of Irish nationalism. That market is sewn up already.
In fact, it’s more likely that this is the kind of thing which will further undermine relations between North and South – a thing which Deputy Richmond, much as this writer likes him personally, has excelled at in recent years. Speak to Unionists, and you’ll find a dislike for the Deputy in question which far exceeds that which they hold even for Sinn Fein. They find his tone overbearing, triumphalist, and highly off-putting.
The big problem here is – as the recent assembly results suggest – that nationalism in Northern Ireland isn’t growing. And no matter how much it might suit us to pretend otherwise, people who feel themselves British – no matter how frustrated they might be with the British Government – are not going to suddenly vote to become Irish because somebody tosses a new flag in their direction. That is especially the case when many of their frustrations come from the fact that the Irish Government – as they see it – is actually the entity causing many of the problems in Northern Ireland.
If this thing goes ahead, it will be what discussions on Unity in the Republic have been for a very long time: A self-regarding nationalist talking shop, at which most people north of the border roll their eyes. We can like that, or lump it, but fantasies about flags and anthems and the commonwealth will persuade precisely nobody.