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February 4, 2024 - 8:00am
Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill yesterday became Northern Ireland’s First Minister, the first pro-Irish reunification politician to lead the region in its 103-year history. This is of huge symbolic significance, but of less practical importance than those unfamiliar with Northern Ireland’s complex politics might realise.
Less practically important, firstly, because the deputy First Minister will be Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the firmly pro-British DUP, and his post and O’Neill’s are legally equal in power and mutually codependent; their parties must also share power with a further two, neither of them Irish Nationalist, in an ideologically broad cabinet. So, Sinn Féin does not have a battering-ram to reorient Northern Ireland towards the Republic, but will be constrained by a messy coalition.
The symbolism is, however, undeniable — Northern Ireland, a state specifically designed to have an inbuilt Unionist majority, will now have an overtly Irish Republican leader.
One factor which enabled Sinn Féin to become Northern Ireland’s largest party is shifting demographics. While once high birth rates in the mainly pro-reunification Catholic community have now collapsed, in common with all Western societies, those among mostly pro-British Protestants have fallen even faster. The 2021 census showed people from Catholic backgrounds outnumbering those from Protestant backgrounds for the first time ever, by 46% to 43%. The Catholic plurality is much wider among those still too young to vote, so simple demographic inertia alone will see the potential vote for pro-reunification parties rising for at least the next few decades.
Yet, as experience in places as varied as Scotland, the Basque Country, Quebec, and New Caledonia shows, it’s quite hard to get voters in stable functioning democracies to opt for radical shifts in sovereignty. In a narrow border poll, the result will be decided by those with weak allegiances to either camp or mixed allegiance to both — an odd mix of liberal progressives with strongly transnational outlooks, conservative Catholics, the growing number of people from mixed families, and even more rapidly growing ethnic minority population.
Unionism’s strongest political suit in the long term is probably to allow Northern Ireland to meander along as a very odd outlier in the UK with a decent quality of life for all and few political crises. In that sort of context, some voters will always choose the devil they know rather than take risk with peace and their own livelihoods — even many voters who don’t feel the slightest emotional connection with Britishness. Restoring devolved government makes that sort of strategy possible.
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SubscribeAbout time to, it must be said.
It’s fine to be a ‘rebel’ but wait till she hits her first management problem. Then the voters will see just how good she really is and the Press will amplify that. My best analogy as a seafarer – passage plans rarely survive the first gale – maybe CS will quote von Molke’s take on that. Good luck to my aquaintances on both sides of the border.
“no plan survives contact with the enemy” Helmuth von Moltke.
General Eisenhower is supposed to have said “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” But if Ms O’Neill has actually done any planning, that would surely be a first for contemporary political leaders in these islands.
“Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”
– Mike Tyson
Seafaring also struck me when reading this article. The ship to Irish reunification left some time back. There will be several ports of call, squalls etc.on the way. To paraphrase MLK, ‘I may not be there to see it…’
Isn’t she the woman that broke lockdown twice going to Republican funerals ?
Obviously someone of quality .
Rather like Nicola Surgeon she can obviously “turn on the waterworks” on demand.
It must be a ‘Celtic’ thing.
Utterly sexist comment from me, but she’s a damn sight more “interesting” than Sturgeon!
I think it’s long been the case that a majority of British people, outside of some enclaves in places like Glasgow and some fringe right wing groups, are increasingly ambivalent about Irish reunification.
“Unionism”, insofar as it relates to Ireland, has not merely lost any general power of political motivation. I suspect a very large number of people – particularly in England – would be hard pressed to even recognise what it means.
The “how” still matters, of course. A return to bombs and bullets on the British mainland would raise the hackles. But if in, let’s say, 10 years time there were to be a democratic reunification, I doubt the general British population would care much except to wish them good luck.
One importance of this is of course that it will influence how hard any future British government will work to shore up the unionist cause. Not very, I think will turn out to be the answer.
I have to say I was impressed with Michelle O’Neill when she attended King Charles’ coronation in May last year. She conducted herself with absolute grace (which cannot be said for Varadkar and his partner) and showed the kind of pragmatism and political maturity that will help to change perceptions of her party and its long term aims.
I’ve always had a rather neutral attitude towards reunification, and it’s telling that O’Neill’s approach has actually won more favour with me in recent times than that of the cantankerous DUP who couldn’t seem to understand that their blinkered fundamentalist thinking was simply hastening the demise of their own cause.
As usual, an astute comment. O’Neill appears to be an iron fist in a velvet glove.
When the Revolutionary Communist Party was running Boris Johnson’s Number 10 Policy Unit, then some of us thought, “Well, if they can make it, then anyone can, including us.” But even that scarcely compared to the rise of Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly.
O’Neill is the anointee of the IRA Army Council, on which Sinn Féin, simply by being Sinn Féin, believes the authority of the Second Dáil to have devolved, thereby making it the sovereign body throughout Ireland. That is what “As an Irish Republican” means. It does not just mean being in favour of a United Ireland. Those seven overwhelmingly Belfast-based veterans of the Provisional IRA are not messing about. As the largest party in both parts of Ireland, Sinn Féin has a pointed lack of contested internal elections, or of lively policy debates on the floor of its Ard Fheis, much less of occasional hecklers.
So important as to have been twice co-opted to the Assembly for very different constituencies, Little-Pengelly is the daughter of Noel Little of the Paris Three, procurers of arms from apartheid South Africa for Ulster Resistance, at whose founding rally both Peter Robinson and the late Ian Paisley spoke, and which has never declared a ceasefire, much less decommissioned any weapons.
In 2017, Little-Pengelly’s election as the MP for the decidedly improbable seat of Belfast South was an example of having to be only the First Past the Post. She owed it to the concerted efforts of the local Loyalist paramilitary organisations, to which she extended barely coded thanks in her acceptance speech. It is highly unusual for a married woman from her background to continue to use her maiden name, even in hyphenated form. But Noel Little’s daughter does so. She lost her seat in 2019, meaning that throughout her time in Parliament, the Government had an overall majority of one. Throughout that time, she was that majority. Countries are sanctioned for less.
Truly the sister of the Liberal Democrats, the Alliance Party has facilitated this in return for plum portfolios, and for quango positions galore, thereby providing the cover of niceness, centrism, moderation, and all that. Let us all learn the lesson. If such an alliance is necessary, then so be it, provided that there is a clear and low limit on policy influence. Meanwhile, and give this a moment to sink in, a Sinn Féin First Minister now faces a Leader of the Opposition from the SDLP. Let us see scrutiny from a Social Democratic and Labour perspective.
The article states that, without a government, Northern Ireland would become “a dysfunctional basket case, with snarling inter-communal relations and malfunctioning public services.”
So, just like Scotland, England and Wales with governments, then.
The Republic cannot afford the cost of reunification. It certainly won’t be treated as generously by the EU as that of Germany.
I agree on the “affordability” side, but I don’t necessarily on the EU’s stance; I’d think the EU would be only too happy to pile on Brexit Britain’s misery (along with supporting Spain over Gibraltar and Argentina over the Falklands).
The clog will be that the EU can’t afford it, either.
To my mind, reunification will come when Britain can no longer afford the vast subsidies it takes to keep NI going. And when it happens, it won’t be a monumental event, it’ll be a rather pedestrian affair ratifying a development that has long overtaken the legal substrate, years after the event.
Not sure what you mean about the misery? The UK government would skip happily away from NI the first chance that it gets. The majority of the population couldn’t care less and will do so even less over time as the social, racial and demography change (particularly in England). Those that do care mainly expect to experience schadenfreude at the expected financial cost and upheaval to Ireland.
Any politician who is able to apologise for past events is a rarity so she has made a positive start. Whether or not she is able to bring the sides together remains to be seen.
On a tangent, both the title of the piece and the photo caption do not capitalise “First Minister”. The body of the piece thankfully does.
I saw that the Guardian headlined “Michelle O’Neill appointed first minister”, implying that she was the first person to be appointed minister. I complained to the Guardian about a misleading headline, and they wrote back to me to say that their style policy is to not capitalise titles unless there is a danger of confusion, so they capitalise “Speaker”, but not otherwise.
I wrote back to say their policy is a load of agricultural value-added, pointing out that “speaker” would only be confusing if you thought everyone not so titled was non-verbal; that not capitalising “first minister” is indeed confusing; and that they capitalise “President Biden”, “Vice-President Harris”, and “Senator Hawley” (no doubt because the Guardian’s classically grounded readership would otherwise understand that Mr. Hawley was a member of the Roman senate…).
I have not heard back.
Ireland will be a muslim country within a few years.The triumph of the catholic majority will be short lived, they might as well enjoy it for now.
I sincerely doubt it. The decline in the Church’s authority has all to do with distrust in religious institutional authority and hierarchy – borne, one may add, by sad experience. Given the painful process it took to get here, there is no reason to assume the Irish would plump for yet another authoritarian set-up.
It is far more likely that you’ll see a resurgence of Celtic Christianity or (sanitised) pre-Christian Celtic beliefs – more spiritual, non-dogmatic, not dependent on organised religion and hierarchy.