A united Ireland is as far away as ever – and, after this week, it may even be a bit further away than it used to be.
That’s the inevitable conclusion from a recent series of announcements and events which indicate that despite all the talk about Irish unity, the border looks as permanent as ever.
Two big announcements last week showed that most of that talking is just political posturing.
First, Leo Varadkar said that all political parties in the south should include Irish unity as an objective in their election manifestos.
It is hard to see what difference that would make.
Then Mary Lou McDonald said that if Sinn Féin enters government in Dublin, it will appoint a Minister for Reunification.
What more could you want than a sort of modern-day Cú Chulainn who, with daring political feats, will single-handedly unite Ireland?
There is just one slight problem, which neither mentioned. What exactly is a united Ireland?
It has always meant a 32-county independent state, as advocated by Wolfe Tone and the 1916 Proclamation.
That was until Sinn Féin claimed exclusive ownership of the idea. It decided that Tone and the 1916 Proclamation were wrong in claiming that the people of Ireland formed a single Irish nation. Instead, SF claimed that Irish unity is merely an economic concept.
Since there are degrees of economic unity: a united Ireland can mean anything from a single state, through a federal system with a regional parliament in Belfast, to just the harmonisation of tax, trade and economic development. (What do we want? A united Ireland? When do we want it? Er, as soon as we have worked out what it means.)
Welcome to a campaign in support of the unknown. Nationalists now practice gesture politics, to achieve something which they have never defined, with an enthusiasm that suggests they are confident it will not come any time soon.
One speaker at last week’s Sinn Féin ard fheis said Dublin must work with Britain to develop a road map that “can actually begin the conversation about what planning and preparing means”. That’s a lot of words to say nothing.
So anyone who demands a border poll should be required to state what question the poll will ask. Should it say “Are you in favour of something which we have not defined”, or perhaps it should list several different possibilities and ask us to select one?
The question it will not ask, of course, is should a united Ireland be independent and neutral, or should it be within the EU, allied to Nato and the US (and therefore backing Israel).
As the “owners” of Irish unity, Sinn Féin insists that a united Ireland must be within the EU which, as Ireland has discovered, allows neither independence nor neutrality. (Guess why the EU and the US support Irish unity?)
That “ownership” came from Commandant Thomas Maguire who, as the last surviving member of the Second Dáil, claimed personal possession of “The Republic”.
He entrusted it to the Provisional Army Council in 1969. Although he took it off them in 1986 when Sinn Féin abandoned abstentionism, the party still claims direct historical descent from 1916.
The problem with a claimed moral monopoly is that, like the Scottish National Party (SNP), if Sinn Féin encounters scandal, the damage will extend beyond the party to the ideal it promotes. Financial scandal did not just damage the SNP, it set Scottish independence back for at least a generation.
So a Sinn Féin scandal will damage the ideal of a united Ireland. It has had plenty of those and a particularly damaging one arrived this week. It is hardly the sort of reputation which will attract unionists, or most nationalists, to the society which it claims a united Ireland will bring.
As a result, the party’s campaign for Irish unity is beginning to look like a fine example of the law of reversed effort. It states that the harder you try to achieve something, the less likely you are to succeed.
So by talking about Irish unity, while running down public services and tying itself in knots over a scandal of its own making, Sinn Féin is pushing a united Ireland further away.
In its constant demands for a “conversation” about unity, it might remember that, as someone once said, silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
Sinn Féin’s silence, accompanied by open government and less party cover-up, will not necessarily produce a united Ireland – but it will certainly stop the current process of pushing it further away.
In its constant demands for a ‘conversation’ about unity, it might remember that silence is one of the great arts of conversation