The reaction to the statement by British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer that a border poll on Irish unity is “not even on the horizon” has been greeted with a predictable enough response.
Starmer, almost certainly the next Prime Minister if current opinion polls and bye-election results are any clue, was speaking to BBC Northern Ireland prior to the start of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
The DUP must be pleased, but have desisted from making any official comment. Party leader Jeffey Donaldson, also preparing for a party conference and mindful of the minefield he might have to face should they enter negotiations to return to Stormont, did not refer to Starmer’s remarks when Donaldson spoke to the media after a meeting of the DUP executive on Thursday.
Not so Sinn Féin. While the party had not commented officially, Chris Hazzard, MP for South Down, could not help himself and summoned up the ghost of James Connolly.
His quoting of Connolly to the effect that the Brits have no business in Ireland is absurd given that Sinn Féin has explicitly recognised that right since it signed up to the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, and enthusiastically embraced the governing of the Six Counties as part of the United Kingdom.
If Starmer ought to read James Connolly, then Hazzard ought to read the Good Friday Agreement, the document so dear to the heart of the post-nationalist Shinners. For in that document, he will find explicitly laid out the conditions that would have to be in place before a British Government would see fit to put in place a “border poll.”
The British and Irish governments, and the Clinton Democrats who made it clear to Adams and the rest that they really had little choice but to accept what was on offer, did not even pretend to beat around the bush in setting out what was to remain the constitutional status of the north, as set out in 1920 and as reaffirmed by Sunningdale in 1973 and in the Hillsborough Agreement in 1985.
The only difference was that in 1920, and in 1973 and 1985 the republicans were totally opposed to any recognition that the six-county state had any legitimacy, or that any majority as measured by any poll or election within that entity had any validity. Thus, in 1973 when a poll was organised, not just the Provos but the SDLP boycotted it.
The very same poll that would take place if there was to be one under the Good Friday Agreement, as is made crystal clear in the GFA’s setting out of the conditions that would need to be present were such a poll to be triggered by the Northern Ireland Secretary.
There is no evidence to support the notion that “it appears likely that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.” None. The only weathervane for this are election results, and since 1998 there has been virtually no shift towards parties which support a united Ireland.
In the 1998 Assembly elections, the first to be held after the GFA, the combined vote for parties supportive of a united Ireland was 38.5%. The SDLP in fact took the biggest share of the vote, so the Shinners cannot even claim that distinction. In last year’s Assembly elections the combined vote for parties in favour of a united Ireland – if one includes People Before Profit – was 40.7%.
Do the math, as the Americans would say. And disregard the nonsense that the Alliance Party vote is “nationalist.” That canard has only recently raised its head among Sinn Féin supporters well aware of the glacial pace of progress towards anything resembling a possible majority within the six counties for a united Ireland.
In a 2020 poll, just 30% of Alliance voters said they would support a united Ireland. Which was almost outweighed by 19% of SDLP supporters who would vote to remain in the UK.
So Starmer is completely correct, and within the spirit and the letter of the sacred Good Friday Agreement in stating that a border poll is “not even on the horizon.” That irks the Shinners because it undermines their claim that what they are at advances the country towards unity.
Those of them familiar with republican history know this, so they are being completely dishonest. The newer ones either do not care, or are ignorant of that history.
The reality is that the only game in town is either a return to Stormont and the election of a new Executive headed by Michelle O’Neill as First Minister, or continued direct rule. Sinn Féin of course realise this themselves but will be annoyed that the British party they most like, and one of whose members Mick Lynch they were fawning over last week, have undermined one of the props for their spin that a border poll is imminent.
The Shinners of course would love to be back running the north under Whitehall and ironically Starmer’s peeing on their border poll parade possibly makes that more likely. The DUP are under no real pressure to agree to return and have been buoyed by their electoral strength against both the Ulster Unionists and Traditional Unionist Voice.
The scuttlebutt was that they were prepared to wait until after next year’s Westminster general election in the hope that a Starmer led majority government might give them a better deal. Starmer, however, appears to be behind the current Tory government with regards to Stormont and told the BBC that while he is “well aware of the issues the DUP have,” that they ought to “get in the room” to resolve them.
While being let down by their comrades appears to have discombobulated the post bellum Sinn Féiners, nationalists will recall that it was the Labour Party which was in power when the decision to build the H Blocks was made and during the worst period of police and prison brutality.
And following last night’s bye-election humiliation of the similarly adrift Scottish National Party, the Shinners do not even have the consolation that expanded self-government in Scotland might boost their own claims to be at the business end of the tunnel to the moon that is embodied in the deal they signed up to in the 1990s.
Tiocfaidh ár border poll has lost some of its lustre, but will no doubt be scrubbed up for more use over the next decades.