Brian Feeney: Why can no unionist say where they want to be in five years?

Sinn Féin’s most experienced – and some would say most effective – northern politician is heading for pastures new.

It’s probably a matter of indifference to most unionists that Conor Murphy is seeking election to Seanad Éireann this month. It shouldn’t be. It should be food for thought.

Murphy says he’s heading for the Seanad to advance preparations for a border poll and reunification.

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He wants to “bring a northern perspective to the intensifying debate around Irish unity”. He told interviewers that a unity referendum is “doable” within five years.

Now of course none of this may happen. Murphy may not even be elected, though that’s thought an unlikely outcome.

The point is that he’s looking ahead, at least five years, after the next Irish election and indeed the inevitable next British one.

The question is: what unionist politician has a clear idea of what they want the future to look like?

On the contrary, why do unionist politicians tell their supporters the fundamental lie that the future can look like the past?

Worse, why do unionist leaders try to undo the present and move backwards, always guaranteed to be unsuccessful and enhance victimhood?

Take the current obsession with the Windsor Framework.

You were present at a pro-union gathering at the end of November where Lord Bew advised unionist parties to forget the Windsor Framework and move on. After all, it was passed in the Commons by 515-29, with only the DUP and crackpot anti-Sunak Conservatives composing the 29.

Furthermore, the present Labour government endorsed it in their manifesto and promised to implement it “in good faith” in their determination to improve relations with the EU.

It’s water under the bridge. Yet half the DUP MLAs and their surviving MPs bang on about it.

As Peter Robinson described Jim Allister, unionism’s equivalent of the last Japanese soldier in the jungle fighting a war that ended decades ago, he doesn’t let a day pass without expanding on the iniquities of the Irish Sea border.

The clangourous empty vessels of loyalism fill social media with their condemnations of the traitorous DUP implementing the Windsor Framework at Stormont. All pointless.

The Greeks had a word for this stuff: adiaphora – matters of indifference.

Of course unionist sentiment and sensibility are affected, but that’s no substitute for strategy. At that gathering in November it was agreed unionism is in crisis and a strategy is needed, but no suggestions were forthcoming.

Why is it that, unlike nationalism in general or Conor Murphy in particular, no unionist can say where they want to be in five years time?

Why are unionist leaders unable to be straight with their supporters, read the writing on the wall to them? Do you not think it’s long past time to lay out the facts?

For example, in 2023 Sinn Féin stood 22 candidates in Fermanagh and Omagh council elections and got 21 elected.

In 2023 in Newry/Armagh, a former unionist MLA made an eejit of himself on TV by asking Sinn Féin not to stand so many council candidates so unionists could have a chance of being elected. Duh.

In 2024 Pat Cullen increased Sinn Féin’s majority in Fermanagh/South Tyrone from 57 to 4,571. In the next British election the DUP will lose East Derry.

Is it not time for Gavin Robinson to stop trying to appease unionist extremism led by Jim Allister, the road to nowhere, and begin explaining why the future will not, cannot, be like the past?

The inevitable strategy for unionism has been laid out and followed successfully by Nelson Mandela.

The first obvious step is to realise that unionist unity is a chimera. You have to look beyond unionism.

As Mandela said: “If you want to make peace with your enemy you have to work with your enemy, then he becomes your partner.”

Do unionists realise where that inevitably leads? It means opening negotiations with the Irish government, but the ground has to be prepared – otherwise there’d be uproar from the wilder shores of unionism.

Nevertheless, reconciliation with the Irish government is the final outcome for unionism.

The alternative is to pursue the traditional route laid out by Maurice Craig: “It’s to hell with the future and live on the past: May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast.”

That’s all unionism offers at present.

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