“…we don’t so much get our predictions wrong as make predictions about the wrong things”.
Like queuing for paper tickets for space trips once imagined in 1950s sci-fi, confident predictions of a near term border poll miss the fact that the future will track through possibilities adjacent to the present, not a linear projection of that present.
Before I get to what I want to say, let me be clear about what I’m not going to say. First, the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement did not end our long argument about the ultimate destination of the territory of Northern Ireland, it merely parked it.
Given the huge social and infrastructural damage by republicans determined to ‘liberate’ Northern Ireland by violence and force, indeed it’s dangerous to assume anything other than the current constitutional position is conditional.
However, conditional doesn’t mean temporary. The default consent is to stay in the UK. This is not whimsy. Nor, despite the venting on the subject even by a former Taoiseach who ought to know better, is constitutional change in any way imminent.
Mr Varadkar’s remarks carried in this IN editorial suggests unification should be “not just an aspiration but an objective”: ie, we need a flip from hope to a concrete plan. Yet beyond SF’s idea of a new minister, there’s no hint at what a plan would look like.
Borrowing from Evans, that’s because nationalism keeps asking itself the wrong questions. This far out from an event that is no closer now than it was in 1998, no one, should insist on a concrete plan or even try to describe a future united Ireland.
Why? Nationalism in Northern Ireland (where remember the key decision needs to be made in order to trigger the change) has only grown by 1% when what’s required to get any Secretary of State to even consider a poll is a growth rate of 18%.
In that context, you might wonder what SF’s Minister for Irish Unity would find to usefully do between now and the next 30/40/50 even 60 years? In all likelihood, little more than the Minister for Brexit Opportunities dreamt up in his short tenure.
The problem isn’t just impatience, or even the cultural hook that Alex Salmond was able to get the once Scots Protestant dominant SNP down from by widening its social and political appeal to Scots Catholics. But that 1% growth since 1998.
To borrow from Bell we have a tendency to ask the wrong questions about the future because we don’t have a sufficient understanding of our capacities to shape that future. Our current answers tend to screw up any future order of delivery.
Over time, what seems to be the hard stuff becomes easier (in tech that means, “automatic doctors, radar implants for the blind, household robots and machine translation would be all done by 1990”), and what we thought would be easy, much harder.
I’m not at saying that unification is impossible or that nationalists should stop being nationalists (as some critics in the comment zone regularly mis-claim). Rather nationalism should recognise that the current strategies are failing, and re-adjust.
Evans’ advice to himself is to”try to think [of] what questions I’m not asking”. In NI we’ve seen in-activist government thrive, so the scope for unasked questions should be vast. And yet, nationalism’s false certainty about the future is its key handicap.
This 1% growth arises from a period when of those joining the electorate since c1991 a plurality came from a nationalist background (paradoxically that much vaunted demographic advantage dissipated as nationalism turned inward/southward).
After twenty six years of peace, power-sharing and equality the comfort of those living in Northern Ireland in day to day life has only deepened. So appeals to unity based on division have driven nationalism’s most natural supporters away.
Of course this is not only affecting nationalism. The poor attendance at both the UUP and DUP conferences recently indicate that most parties (with the possible exception of Alliance) are making offers that rarely pique the interests of ordinary citizens.
For once, Sinn Féin felt the same lack of public interest in its all-island Ard Fheis in Athlone where a poorly attended triangle of members were dwarfed by a vast empty space in the rest of the conference hall. Such images bely the claims of an imminent UI.
Politics in Northern Ireland is stranded in performative tribalism. Northern nationalism has wasted most of its opportunities to show leadership by embracing mutualism and demonstrating the appeal of closer relations with the rest of the island.
Unionism has made the same mistake with the Union. It is only now starting to dawn on some of their smarter politicians that abandoning the centre in order to play bare bellies in the car park with Sinn Féin over flegs, etc has cost them their majority.
In the south, simply enacting an hourly schedule from Belfast to Dublin has upset suburban rail users over disrupted timetables. All problems (worth solving) have layers. They require patience and will to see even the smallest changes through.
Winning the constitutional argument means accepting that any sound solution takes time and requires widening of your circles of concern, influence and confluence: ie, moving past the loyalties of just one tribe. Oh, and looking for new questions to ask.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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