Opinion

Newton Emerson: Opinions differ on opinion polls

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Jeremy Corbyn speaking at Queen's University Belfast on Thursday during his first visit to Northern Ireland as Labour leader. Picture by Hugh Russell
Jeremy Corbyn speaking at Queen's University Belfast on Thursday during his first visit to Northern Ireland as Labour leader. Picture by Hugh Russell Jeremy Corbyn speaking at Queen's University Belfast on Thursday during his first visit to Northern Ireland as Labour leader. Picture by Hugh Russell

ONE week after Prime Minister Theresa May compared two LucidTalk polls from last year to warn of growing support for a united Ireland, a poll by Queen's University Belfast has found strong support for the union - or weak support, if 'don't knows' are factored in.

LucidTalk says this shows "the same broad trends" as its two polls last year, although when the second of those polls came out it warned not to extrapolate trends from them, as their methodologies were completely different.

If all this raises one consistent point it is that opinion polls cannot be a factor in triggering a border poll.

The imminent judicial review into what that trigger should be, brought by victims campaigner Raymond McCord, is as timely as it is necessary.

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The SDLP has accused Conservative Brexit secretary David Davis of sneaking into Northern Ireland after he failed to meet Stormont parties while attending a one-hour event at Stormont hosted by the secretary of state.

But because there is no Tory fiasco Jeremy Corbyn cannot outdo, the Labour leader spent two days in Northern Ireland while refusing to meet his own party.

Corbyn is so contemptuous of Labour's branch on this side of the water he did not even initially respond to its requests for a meeting.

Presumably this is connected to his long-standing support for a united Ireland and the Labour left's belief that organising here might undermine that cause.

Yet Labour's huge surge in membership in Northern Ireland over the past two years, believed to have given it more members than any other party in the region, is entirely due to people enthused by Jeremy Corbyn - and thus either supportive of, or least not deterred by, his forthright Irish republicanism.

A politician, as opposed to an ideologue, might have welcomed that and built on it.

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Fine Gael has reached a landmark deal with Sinn Féin to pass a controversial bill on how judges are appointed.

All other parties in the Dáil, the judiciary and the European Commission have objected to what they see as politicising judicial appointments.

However, Sinn Féin has backed the bill in return for a sentencing guidelines council that would limit the discretion of judges, and which it says it has wanted for years.

The deal has major significance for prospects of a Fine Gael-Sinn Féin coalition. Not only have both parties demonstrated they can cooperate, but Fine Gael - which presents itself as the law and order party - is taking on the courts with a party that still does not 'recognise' the Republic's special criminal court.

There is also a minor Stormont dimension. A sentencing guidelines council for Northern Ireland was proposed in the 2010 Hillsborough Castle Agreement, which devolved policing and justice powers.

Sinn Féin and the DUP happily signed up to that but left it to Alliance to implement and it vanished into the general justice fudge.

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Ian Paisley jnr has welcomed the new £2 limit in Britain on fixed-odds betting terminals, which he described as "a plague on many families".

The DUP MP challenged Sinn Féin to help extend the restriction to Northern Ireland and challenged the government to tackle online gambling as well.

Paisley has had a change of heart since 2014, when he and party colleague Jim Shannon signed a Commons early day motion expressing concern at "the campaign which is being waged against fixed odds betting terminals in bookmakers' shops and against bookmakers themselves".

Last week's decision by ministers to impose the £2 limit came after 25 Tory backbenchers, led by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, warned the Prime Minister it was her "moral duty" to stand up to lobbying by the gambling industry.

Either the DUP did not want to be on the wrong side of this argument or it sensed which way the wind was blowing.

Luckily, moving the focus onto online gambling will please the bookies regardless.

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Sinn Féin has responded to a call from Barra McGrory, the former director of public prosecutions, for an end to Troubles prosecutions.

Party president Mary Lou McDonald said: "The view that we take is that all options have to be available to victims, survivors and their families - and that includes pursuing prosecutions."

That was not quite the view of her predecessor Gerry Adams as recently as last September, when he said families had a right to prosecutions but nobody should be taken to court or sent to prison for a Troubles crime, making prosecution meaningless.

What Sinn Féin really wants is an amnesty. It would be kinder to come out and say so.

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Last week I wrote that police and councils can close roads for events, despite the head of the civil service saying the North West 200 might be cancelled if ministers are not in place to approve road closures.

A reader has emailed to correct me: the council power, enacted late last year, specifically excludes motorsport events.

Their road closures must be ordered by the Department for Infrastructure under separate 1986 legislation.

However, my correspondent adds: "Such orders have never been signed by ministers but always by civil servants."

newton@irishnews.com