Nothing stands still. The best statecraft is not about attempting to freeze society at a specific moment in time you deem ideal or about trying to return to a lost perfection that has been swept away by events. The best statecraft is about navigating the tides and eddies of history to achieve the optimal results for as many people as possible at any given moment, even if various leaders aim for certain outcomes along the way.
The future thus belongs to those with the vision to shape it to what they believe, rather than defensively trying to stand still or weakly clinging to a vanishing past. The moment you set yourself against the future, the best you can hope for is defeat in slow motion.
In the north, there are effectively two visions of our future.
The first is a reunited Ireland, the preference and goal of nationalists and, full disclosure, this is the outcome I aspire to, believe in and work towards.
The alternative vision is that embraced by the ‘others’.
The people who describe themselves using this label are making a statement that they will not be defined by what is derisively referred to as ‘orange and green politics’. They want something better, something more meaningful and something not defined by our past. And whilst parties such as the Green Party of Northern Ireland or People Before Profit label themselves as others, it is really the Alliance Party that is seen as their representatives.
For me, there is a lot to like about the Alliance Party. They are unashamedly liberal, they have a strong pro-European ethos and they have a vision of where they want the north to go. If I were to describe that vision as I understand it, it would be of a shared, non-sectarian Northern Ireland where elections are conducted on issues rather than as sectarian headcounts and everyone works together for the betterment of all.
On the constitutional question, they profess agnosticism. As Naomi Long said a few years ago when interviewed
“The things that are pressing on people’s minds, our health service, on the cost-of-living crisis, the fact that we have to deal with climate change – these are the issues that are gripping people, not the constitutional question right now,”…
“And when we take a position, as undoubtedly will happen at some point in the future, it will be based on facts and evidence.
“We’re not going to see a referendum and we don’t want to support a referendum on Northern Ireland’s future in the context of, for example, a Brexit-style referendum where you promise everything to everybody, and everybody comes away disappointed.
“So, we’ve got to actually focus on the things that matter to people and I think what we’ve got to do also is respect the fact that for many people in our community, and for a growing number, it isn’t the thing that defines their politics, and we’ve got to adapt our politics to respect that.”
Which is a very reasonable take. As visions go, it’s damned attractive and it is completely understandable why a lot of people support it, particularly those who are tired of the endless circular arguments the border question has mired us all in.
The vision has just got one problem.
It’s impossible.
Yes, I am well aware the first reaction by those who support this outcome is ‘well, you would say that’. After all, as someone who desires reunification and openly says so, critiquing the alternative is to be expected. That’s fair enough. But please bear with me and allow me to explain why I believe the Alliance party’s vision is an impossibility.
Simply put, I believe the Alliance party refuses to face the nature of the problem.
A few months ago I wrote a post on our system of government, ‘Consociationalism is the last refuge of the damned for a reason’. My belief as expressed in that piece is that Northern Ireland is fundamentally unworkable and that the institutions as constituted are not designed to give us good government, but to prevent a return to conflict by giving all sides a stake in running the place.
One critical comment of that piece was on X where a Mr. David Lawrenson said the following,
“Nationalists refuse to allow NI to work. Then say that it doesn’t work and demand to get their way as a “solution”.”
Well…yes?
The reason Northern Ireland is unworkable is that some 40% of the population reject its legitimacy on some level. This is because in the nationalist view of history, partition was an unjust imposition on the island of Ireland. Nationalists in the north have never gotten over that trauma, hence the view that partition is illegitimate. Now this is distinct from accepting the reality of the situation, which was required in the GFA and conceded by nationalism as a recognition that the principle of consent applied to the six counties alone rather the island of Ireland as a whole.
It is also why comparisons to small countries that are thriving, with the implicit point that ‘they’re succeeding in spite of their size so we can too’ fail, most of those countries likely don’t have four out of ten people seeking to abolish them. The world must be accepted as it is but acceptance does not mean that reality has to be endorsed. The circumstances under which Northern Ireland was formed, and the proportion of the population who felt wronged by its formation, meant what we would now term loser’s consent was never obtained with baleful effects still felt over a century later.
This is something I feel the Alliance party doesn’t wish to tackle. Talking about the constitutional issue is ‘orange and green’ politics and ‘orange and green politics’ is axiomatically bad. But orange and green politics is just another way of talking about the divisions in our society rooted in the unresolved trauma of our past. Because Alliance doesn’t want to engage with the root cause of the problems bedeviling our society, they are reduced to proposing solutions that are either tinkering at the edges, and thus solving nothing, or proposing more fundamental reforms that stand next to no chance of ever becoming reality.
To get to the Alliance party’s vision of the future, where bread-and-butter issues define our politics rather than the constitutional question, you cannot ignore those defining orange and green politics; you have to somehow resolve them. Because until you resolve that issue, it is going to infect all other discourse in our politics. You merely have to look at how every issue is viewed through the prism of the constitutional question to realise that is the case. Remember how the Brexit debate sent everyone back to their respective trenches for example?
Alliance may bemoan the focus on the constitutional question, but the other parties draw their strength from voters who prioritise it. And while much is made of Alliance’s vote share when we talk of the emerging middle ground, the vast majority of voters still support parties that take a stance on the issue.
Alliance must therefore govern alongside parties who care very much about orange and green politics and that represent constituencies that are invested in those discussions.
As a result, Alliance’s vaunted goals of ‘reforming the institutions’ or ‘focusing on the task at hand’ never amount to anything. Parties empowered by the constitutional question block or stymie them.
And here’s the rub. They were always going to block or stymie them.
What was the plan for enacting reform when those parties such as the DUP and Sinn Féin, bigger than your own, were going to stop you?
Was it simply to highlight they were stopping you and hope that motivated more of the public to revolt against the toxic status quo and turn to what you were offering? If that was the plan, the decline in the vote share of Alliance since 2024 with the expectation seats will be lost in the upcoming Assembly election seem to indicate that it isn’t working. They are being judged on their perceived delivery, same as anyone else even though their explanation that the system is against them has merit.
That’s because the system as designed makes it incredibly easy for anyone to block anything they don’t like, which itself is a reflection of the consociational nature of that government, which is required because we live in a society hopelessly divided over the border question, which the Alliance party is determined to not talk about.
For the Alliance vision of that non-sectarian, bread-and-butter focused Northern Ireland to be credible they needed a believable plan to get there that took into account our consociational system of government and the self-interest of the existing parties. I am afraid they don’t have that and I don’t believe they ever will. As much as people may critique advocates of reunification for lacking a plan for what a reunited Ireland may look like, they do at least have a mechanism codified in both domestic law and international treaty for achieving it.
In contrast, Alliance seems to have believed that time would heal ancient wounds and a desire for more competent government would galvanise support for their platform and away from parties who prioritise the constitutional question. That is not a million miles away then from those rightly mocked reunification advocates who believe time and demographics will deliver them their prize without hard work or answering the hard questions… and with the same results.
And the hard question is the constitutional one. You cannot behave as if post-partition politics are the norm when most of society is still split over it.
In other words, so long as Northern Ireland exists, that existence will be contested and rejected by such a large proportion of the population that it is unstable. To manage that instability, a consociational form of government granting everyone a stake is a necessity as the only way of actually running the place. Such a system empowers community defenders, those who argue they will defend their sect’s interests against enemies both external and internal, against consensus builders, in this case empowering parties such as the DUP and Sinn Féin.
The stake these parties possess and their ability to block what they don’t like is what matters to their voters, not effective government. And no community defender will willingly disarm themselves of that ability to block precisely because they fear what their constitutional opponents will do if they don’t have it. Yes, those parties may stumble. They may lose support. But when they do it is not the centre that benefits but even harder line incarnations of themselves, as the DUP is finding with regards to the TUV. If the Alliance vision stood a chance of coming to pass, the failures of the community defenders (of which there are many) would have seen people flock to them or parties like them.
I want to say that this is not a call for Alliance to ‘get off the fence’ and pick a side. That would kind of of defeat the point of the party. But their own vision of the future has no prospect of success, it is impossible to realise in the current context. If I must be blunt, I think it is a seductive easy answer, the one sold to people who are tired of the endless bickering but who imagine there is a solution that requires no major upheaval to our society. One which somehow leads to all our problems being fixed if people just choose that outcome.
People are never going to choose that outcome of their own volition.
The constitutional question can only be resolved by reunification, as the idea is too obvious to ever fade away and too many people in Northern Ireland aspire to it. If you’re of a Unionist persuasion, the constitutional question is to be managed like a game without an ending. That is the alternative, not Alliance’s unreachable ideal, but the current setup of blocking vetoes and permanent inter-communal tension.
The alternative is what we have now, for decades to come.
That’s not to say Alliance’s vision is of no value, even if it is impossible to reach in practice. It is arguable that the pursuit of a better, more harmonious state will yield its own rewards through incremental improvements in government or a softening of attitudes on all sides.
The Alliance vision, the vision of the others, will never come to pass. But the value of their vision maybe in just making the status quo a bit more bearable.
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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