Ahead of the first annual British Irish Summit Shared Island remains the only viable game in town…

“…planning must precede a crisis rather than follow it, ensuring that shocks lead to constructive reform, rather than losses in resilience.”

–Confronting the long crisis, Alex Evans • Bruce Jones • David Steven

Today sees the first annual summit in London between the Irish and British governments. Although there are multiple crises facing both the UK and the EU bloc of which Ireland remains a part, for once there’s presently none in Northern Ireland.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be more. Internationally the last few weeks have shown how the post war system has become vulnerable to acute disruption and even failure. The key challenge amongst allies is to figure how to manage shared risk.

In the south, the vexed question of neutrality is being discussed in the Dail and elsewhere in the context where the US is tumbling the degree to which Ireland is not doing its bit to defend transatlantic data cables estimated to be worth €7.5 trillion.

The pressure for change is everywhere, yet the willingness to act upon it still wanting. As Evans, Jones and Stevens note in their 2010 paper for Brookings (link above) on handling the aftermath of the global crisis…

The pace of the transition will be dictated by the risks themselves, yet governments will only succeed if they are prepared to take the initiative. Even in the best case, outcomes will be ‘messy’ and far from perfect. Results will be determined by governments’ ability to act in concert, as well as with networks of non-state actors.
The aim should not be to balance power between competing states, but to aggregate the efforts of those willing to aim for the preferred destination, while marginalizing or excluding those who are not (including those who actively seek to capsize the boat). [Emphasis added]

Coming back to Northern Ireland, it may be significant that we have just our first programme for Government since 2011, a mere year after that paper was written and an aon ago in terms of where the rest of the world has meandered ever since.

Whilst understandable, both the government of the UK (from 2010) and that of the Republic (from 2011) took a shared view that Northern Ireland had had enough cosseting from Westminster and Dublin and it was time for Stormont to stand alone.

When the RHI crisis came in 2016 Northern Ireland had slipped so far down the agenda, neither government knew what to do. When Stormont collapsed after the election to nowhere in early 2017, they simply ignored its absence for the next three years.

This removed view both co-guarantors proved disastrous for the institution of the Belfast Agreement. There’s a saying in foreign affairs circles in DC that you can’t solve a problem if you’re not attached to it. However, after 2020 things began to change.

The key departure was the setting up of the Shared Island Initiative in the Taoiseach’s office in government buildings in Dublin under Micheál Martin’s first term in October 2020 to address strategic challenges faced on the island of Ireland.

Its aim, to create “a constructive and inclusive dialogue and a comprehensive programme of research to support the building of consensus around a shared future on the island”. To begin with many dismissed it, because it started largely with research.

By placing it in the Taoiseach’s Office (the equivalent of the Cabinet Office in Whitehall) it operates as an overarching framework for policy for every minister in the cabinet to identify north-south aspects and opportunities in their work.

So the potential is raised not only to develop a programme for improving operating systems on the island but also to provide opportunities for mutual learning in education and how to support schools that operate in poorer communities.

The research function is aimed at manifesting multiple opportunities for co-operation across the island, by listening, learning and changing relationships for clearly identified and mutually agreed benefits north and south. Without preconditions.

It is part of a wider attempt to secure Ireland’s place in a rapidly changing and precarious world by deepening relations between the Republic and Northern Ireland, the Republic and the UK and, where relevant, in partnership with the EU.

It’s a narrative, but one based on actions, not just promises. The Shared Island Initiative puts flesh on the bones of the shared future idea from the 2000s by: 1, giving it significant resources; and 2, siting it at the core of government decision making.

Already SII has created meaningful north south research synergies on wicked problems which cross borders, reversing a long decline as successive research assessment regimes encouraged NI campuses to prioritise UK partners over the last 30/40 years.

So far it is the only significant game in town since the Belfast Agreement. Yet, it can only operate effectively on the basis of identifying and fulfilling genuine mutual needs. What it isn’t and cannot be is a trojan horse for political unification.

Northern Ireland has changed even from 2003 when we wrote A Long Peace on the future of Unionism in Northern Ireland when we warned about how jobs in the public sector were prized above those in what was then a lower paid private sector.

Now with the highest growth in median income in the UK, Northern Ireland is beginning to thrive. New technology based industries are bringing higher paid work here. Two hundred new workers at Thales will boost money flowing into East Belfast.

And yet few of these metrics are known about let alone publicly understood. Perhaps the joint work of Robinson and McGuinness has begun to pay off. Or simply the long and sustained peace that finally encouraged foreign capital to come.

But it is about time we took ownership not just of the wicked problems that beset the poorest, but the means of developing greater prosperity. A reset between the two governments is a good start. But we have own these opportunities locally too.

It’s beyond irony that there’s barely any mention of the Shared Island Initiative in Stormont’s brand new programme for government beyond a funding stream to tackle educational exclusion in (I kid you not) Paul Givan’s Department of Education.

You couldn’t make it up. But as the character Logan Roy says to his son in the Netflix series Succession, “everyone has a game”. It’s time local politicians made up their own minds what their game is going to be. Continuing to drift is no longer sustainable.

Next time there’s a break there should be a resilient east west axis which allows the governments to step in decisively to take whatever firm actions that are deemed necessary to get Northern Ireland back on the even keel it finally deserves.