A Real Strategy for Reunification – and Why the SDLP Matters

Reunification will come, but not necessarily soon, and not by wishful thinking. The combined nationalist vote still sits at roughly forty per cent, with no credible plan to move it beyond fifty, in a way that would persuade the Secretary of State to act. However, among many nationalists, there’s a strong sense that reunification is almost within reach. Sinn Féin’s dominance feeds that belief, but momentum within one party and one community has clear limits.

Where is the strategy to win new people, specifically Protestants?

I would ask traditional nationalists to dig deep and find the generosity to really listen to what follows.

I believe reunification could depend on helping ordinary Protestants feel they have as much of a place within Irish unity politics as traditional Catholic nationalists. When I use the words Protestant and Catholic, I mean cultural communities, rather than churchgoers.

Is the reunification story weakened by a Protestant role in making it happen, or strengthened by it?

Fundamentally, northern nationalism is still almost always something inherited and Catholic. But for me, my position on the constitutional question hasn’t been like that; it’s where I found myself after a process of questioning and change. I wasn’t born into Irish-Catholic nationalism, and my formative years were spent in a Protestant culture.

So for me to feel at home with pro-reunification politics, there should be no sense of being not quite Irish enough, no assumed knowledge of basic school Irish, no presumed knowledge of the GAA and no pressure to know a cultural language that doesn’t feel familiar to me.

In my opinion, the Heather Humphreys episode, where an Ulster Protestant background became a point of suspicion, should have prompted deeper reflection. Dismissing her experience as isolated really misses what it signalled to open-minded Protestants in the North, who may have begun to imagine a place for themselves in a new Ireland. And that was that our background is suspect to some. Should an ordinary Ulster Protestant upbringing be something we have to hide? I’ve articulated my position out on Slugger from the beginning, and yet, when I simply try to articulate parts of the unionist perspective gleaned from my Protestant upbringing, that’s forgotten, and it’s assumed I am a unionist.

Truthfully, I will never find a political home within Sinn Féin. They have their version of history, and it belongs to them, but we will always see things differently. To their credit, Sinn Féin have shown courage in challenging parts of their own base, by attending remembrance events and meeting the Royal Family. Unionists will never praise these gestures, but they do matter. Without their disciplined block vote, there would be no nationalist First Minister, an important milestone. It represents confidence and change, but it hasn’t expanded the appeal for reunification. Nationalism benefits from transfers and soft support from the middle ground, but that isn’t the same as conviction or the kind of emotional and cultural confidence needed for constitutional change.

So, where might a civic opening come from within existing politics? This could be the point of the SDLP, who are so often dismissed as irrelevant. The party could become the civic bridge Sinn Féin just can’t be. The SDLP’s strength doesn’t lie in chasing the same nationalist votes, but in winning new people entirely, and that could be a game-changer in shifting the numbers.

Some will know that one of the SDLP’s founders, Ivan Cooper, was Protestant. Former chair Jonathan Stephenson was also from a Protestant background. These facts exist, but they’ve never been visible enough to challenge the wider perception of the party as culturally Catholic.

There have been other signals too. Heather Wilson, from a unionist background, stood for the SDLP in 2019. She said she wasn’t the only Protestant in the party, but the fact that I had to look that up tells its own story about visibility in 2025.

More recently, Ross Neill, who grew up in a Protestant family in south Belfast and is now an SDLP member, said this in an interview with the Irish Times:

“If people down South want more people from my background to feel Irish, they need to make it something that is more about shared values and less about cultural markers, such as the GAA and the Irish language.” Neil, to be clear, has no issues with either: “People feel very passionate about them, and they absolutely are part of the tapestry of what it means to be Irish. But if they become the defining things, they can begin suddenly to exclude people.”

So while the SDLP shouldn’t be written off as incapable of bridging the divide, it can’t rely on quiet goodwill either. It needs to show, clearly and consistently, that Protestants belong there, not just in principle but in practice.

Alliance proved that social permission can move; it became socially acceptable for Protestants to vote outside overt unionism.

So why don’t I just get on with it and join the SDLP? Because, as I tried to explain above, it isn’t just about signing a membership form; it’s still about crossing a cultural line and stepping into a space that can make you feel like an outsider.

The SDLP can’t assume it looks open to Protestants, but it must do the hard work of making it so. This means more Protestant candidates, sustained engagement in Protestant civic spaces, and a tone that doesn’t assume shared background.

The work of persuasion needs to start by making active, visible participation in nationalist politics very possible for pro-unity Protestants.

The rewards could be enormous. Some hardline unionists already resent Alliance for seeming to dilute identity, but seeing Protestants at home in an openly nationalist movement would be harder to dismiss. Open political diversity among Protestants and a genuinely pro-unity party could really shift the centre of gravity in Northern politics.

Unfortunately, that kind of change isn’t on the table right now, partly because nationalism hasn’t fully acknowledged the cultural blind spot that limits it. As I have said above, it’s hard to find a natural entry point into pro-reunification politics if you didn’t grow up in an Irish-Catholic-nationalist home.

If the SDLP puts its back into making these changes, the reward could be a significant shift in numbers and attitudes. For Sinn Féin, it may mean restraint at times, knowing when another nationalist party is better placed to do the persuading. If unity is the goal, party interest must come second. In a movement where constitutional change is the aspiration, normal party politics should not apply. What’s needed now is a coordinated strategy that puts the project of reunification above party interests, built on cooperation and shared purpose rather than rivalry.

Reunification will be decided by a border poll, but it doesn’t have to be a Catholic-nationalist victory over a Protestant-unionist community. If nationalism can include Protestant representation within its ranks, it starts to dissolve old divides and replaces them with something more civic and shared, and that’s a great foundation for the future.