Opinion

Newton Emerson: There's potential for a border poll in 2023 to clear the air rather than muddy the waters

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.

Could a border poll be held in 2023. Picture by Rui Vieira/PA Wire
Could a border poll be held in 2023. Picture by Rui Vieira/PA Wire Could a border poll be held in 2023. Picture by Rui Vieira/PA Wire

Belfast solicitor Niall Murphy, founder of the ‘Ireland’s Future’ civic nationalist campaign, has called for a border poll to be held on May 23, 2023 because that is the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement referendum.

Murphy’s remarks, made in an Irish Times interview two weeks ago, perhaps unwittingly echoed the 2018 speech from Peter Robinson proposing “generational settlements” between border polls.

Robinson did not propose moving the goalposts on the 50 per cent plus one margin of victory, nor did he suggest any form of separate unionist consent - these remain ideas nationalists and republicans are debating between themselves.

The former DUP leader made a point of saying unionists should and would accept a simple majority outcome, as plainly implied in the agreement.

Generational settlements are also consistent with the agreement, which specifies a minimum gap of seven years between border polls, in addition to the secretary of state believing a nationalist victory is likely.

There is no detail given on a maximum gap, just as there is no detail on what constitutes ‘likely’. Robinson was vague on what unionists might offer nationalists, apart from agreeing an Article 50-type process for negotiating a united Ireland. To count as any kind of ‘settlement’, a quarter-century recasting of arrangements within Northern Ireland would also have to be on the table.

The unionist objection to a border poll, certainly by 2023, is not that they would lose but that it would open the door to immediate demands for further polls every seven years.

This is a valid concern, grounded in the agreement and the conduct of republican campaigns. Sinn Féin has been calling for a poll since the start of the welfare reform crisis in 2012, when not even its most excitable supporters could have believed it might win.

Ireland’s Future strongly objects to a border poll being described as ‘divisive’, correctly pointing out this is anti-agreement.

However, it is equally anti-agreement to call for a poll not with the intention of settling the matter but to unsettle Northern Ireland as a deliberate strategy.

The agreement requires everyone to work its institutions in “good faith”, to achieve “reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust”.

It is laughable for people who complain that Brexit has undermined this to move straight onto bad faith demands for a border poll.

Of course, Brexit has deeply undermined the relationships at the heart of the agreement.

A synthesis of Murphy and Robinson’s ideas would enable a poll to be held in 2023 with the potential of clearing the air instead of muddying the waters.

The secretary of state is free to set aside the requirement for a likely nationalist victory and would presumably do so if unionism and nationalism agreed to a vote.

How the length of the settlement would be determined is a challenging thought experiment. It would be anti-democratic to just ban another poll for 25 years - a political aeon. Flexibility would have to be allowed for more Brexit-scale momentous change. If a unionist victory was unexpectedly narrow, the gap would have to be shortened: a sliding scale could be imagined, governed by a formula.

Or perhaps d’Hondt-style precision would be unnecessary. The margin of unionist victory would make it obvious whether a generational gap was appropriate, with momentous events refining that judgment on the hoof.

What would matter would be unionism and nationalism agreeing to accept this in advance.

Alas, such an agreement is nowhere close to likely.

Robinson delivered his 2018 speech at Queen’s University Belfast, with the current DUP leadership sitting directly in front of him in the lecture hall. His tacit criticism of that leadership was wide-ranging and remorseless and led to the entire incident being stuffed down the DUP memory hole, proving Robinson’s central point that his party cannot face up to change.

Sinn Féin’s initial reaction was to claim the speech did move the goalposts, with national chair Declan Kearney calling it a “proxy for an unchanged DUP agenda of dismantling the Good Friday Agreement and redefining democracy”.

Once it became clear this accusation was baseless, neither Sinn Féin nor its proxies ever mentioned it again.

Yet Robinson’s proposal remains the only significant unionist contribution to the border poll debate.

If an idea unites the DUP and Sinn Féin in silence, you can be sure it is a good one.