The third episode of the Borderlands podcast has dropped. While last week’s episodes focused on the points of views of Nationalists and Unionists respectively, this one focused on the Others and their political tribunes in the Alliance Party. According to the BBC article covering the episode…
“Alliance Party leader Naomi Long has called for the Northern Ireland secretary to set out the criteria for when he would call a border poll. The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) says a referendum must be held if the secretary of state believes it is likely that a majority of people in Northern Ireland would vote for Irish unification. However, how that is measured has never been made clear. Now Long, who is also Stormont’s justice minister, has said she believes the British government must give certainty about the process.
“I think it would be helpful for the secretary of state to set out what the conditions for a border poll would be,” she told the BBC’s Borderland podcast.”What I think is toxic at the moment is by not setting out the conditions every single election becomes a kind of proxy for a border poll.”
Naomi is correct that each election is fought as a proxy border poll, with results pored over to determine the health of the Unionist and Nationalist voting blocs and to see how it impacts the perennial constitutional debate. Setting out the conditions COULD potentially change that and perhaps facilitate a shift for each election to be fought on issues, though if the conditions include some kind of electoral calculation it could actually compound the problem Naomi identifies.
Nevertheless, it shows the understated influence of Naomi Long and her voting constituency on the entire debate. As David McCann of this parish says in the same article…
“I don’t think we will see a nationalist or unionist majority any time in the foreseeable future in the Assembly…My view has always been that this goes through one woman… and that is Naomi Long. It is whenever she and her party decide it is time to have this conversation.”
Whilst Claire Hanna and her SDLP seem minded to challenge Naomi and the Alliance for their hegemony over the centre ground, determined to pitch a United Ireland to the middle, David has a point that Naomi and the Alliance currently wield massive, and unstated, power over the whole constitutional debate given that constituency is the one who will decide its outcome.
Whether the Secretary of State will heed that call is up for debate. Owen Polley has argued in this ‘Newsletter‘ article from late 2023 that setting out the criteria would be a stupid move on the part of the UK government…
“As Ben Lowry has pointed out on these pages, it’s extraordinary enough that the UK accepted in theory that its devolved regions could break-up the Union unilaterally, through a one-off vote. It’s an example, arguably, of an innate sense of British fairness, tolerance and pluralism that can at times tilt into weakness…The government, so far, has resisted this lobbying, but, as we’ve seen before, politicians at Westminster are prone to being worn down by the endless grievance-mongering of Irish nationalism. There’s no guarantee that this won’t happen again with the referendum. But it would be particularly stupid to set tests that automatically trigger a damaging and divisive campaign.”
Between Leo Varadkar last week accusing the Irish government of not doing enough planning, and Naomi Long this week asking for the criteria for a poll, it does seem as if there is a demand for more information before minds are made up and decisions reached. Whether that information is forthcoming remains to be seen…
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