Now we have three famous influential GAA figures, Peter Canavan, Jarlath Burns and Joe Brolly, supporting a border poll, or advocating that the GAA support Irish unity in a border poll.
Characteristically Brolly is the most explicit. He says the north is, ‘a dysfunctional entity, a pretence that cannot survive’. Who could disagree?
The support of these men is more evidence of the unstoppable momentum that has built up for a poll. For the first time an Irish Times columnist, Una Mullally, has tried to raise consciousness in the Republic of why it’s an important matter for northerners, a far cry from that newspaper’s usual wide of the mark editorial line on the north.
It’s OK to say it out loud. A border poll is inevitable now. It’s only a question of when. There are other critical matters, of which more anon. The present stance of the two main parties in the south is hypocritical and intellectually dishonest. The short version of their response, ‘the time is not right’ is just unforgivably disingenuous. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil know perfectly well that if our dim, witless, proconsul were to call next week for a border poll, it would be at least 2021 before it took place.
Let’s have a brief look at the political logistics. The two governments would have to agree on the question, or questions. Yes, a border poll isn’t just for the north; the south must vote too. Before any such polls, there would have to be agreement on the critical matters. Would it be a unitary state, a federal state, a confederal state? Would there be a single legislature or would the north have a legislature subordinate to the Oireachtas, as already provided for in Bunreacht na hÉireann? Depending on the answer, there might have to be a constitutional referendum in the south.
All that and more would need to have been agreed in a forum of some kind, a citizens assembly, all-party round table talks, some mechanism to answer questions about pensions, savings, health service, education, currency (well OK, the Euro, because we’d be in the EU again), transfer of financial obligations, and so on. Remember, the SNP produced a 602 page booklet laying out what an independent Scotland would look like. So the cant, ‘the time is not right’, is a disgraceful excuse for doing nothing.
The momentum for a border poll is not driven by any single motor. Yes, there is rapid demographic change, there is the catastrophe of Brexit, and there is the refusal of unionism to operate the place they were given in 1921 equitably. They had a decade to behave decently: they blew it. Hence Brolly’s description of this place as dysfunctional and a pretence.
Now here are a few points you mightn’t have thought of. First, as soon as a proconsul announces a border poll, the legitimacy of the north’s existence is gone. It means the British believe most people here want out of the UK. Secondly, if unionists had any wit, which they haven’t, they would opt for a unitary state. Here’s why. They are a community in retreat. Their current majority is like snow on a pitched roof. They are a diminishing minority in Ireland.
They would be nuts to opt to keep a Stormont assembly in which they would be an ever diminishing minority, entering Stormont at a roundabout with a statue of Bobby Sands on the pedestal. Far preferable to be constantly in government in a unitary state where they would always constitute a sufficiently large group to be a junior partner in coalition, guaranteed by the south’s electoral system. Who remembers the last single party government?
There is of course the basic democratic reason for a poll. That wouldn’t appeal to unionists, but unification is the solution which avoids the backstop and allows the British to leave the EU and give everyone else in Europe peace and quiet. It is provided for in the Good Friday Agreement and allows the will of the majority north and south to prevail.
All we need now is for an Irish government to start thinking about it before its necessity hits them in the face after an election here.
