Sinn Fein's rise, Brexit and changing demography make what once was a distant possibility seem increasingly likely
cavernous roof of the Royal Dublin Society’s Simmonscourt Hall, Mary Lou McDonald, the president of Sinn Fein, is facing a gaggle of reporters. The atmosphere is electric; the day before, February 8th, Sinn Fein had won more first-choice votes in the general election than any of Ireland’s other parties, which was a stunning upset.
The unionists, who have dominated Northern Ireland since partition, are for the most part Protestants whose identities are bound up with Britishness—whether through support for the British government itself, British traditions or the idea that the royal family is the ultimate defender of their faith.
If the north were to vote for unification, the south’s constitution would have to be changed, which would require its people, too, to have a vote. In “A Treatise on Northern Ireland”, Brendan O’Leary, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that the “rational order” would be for such a vote to take place after some time spent negotiating the form of unification.
Quite a few Northern Irish people, of all confessions and none, feel that Brexit has stripped them of their European identity. There are a lot of people who are not against the idea of a united Ireland but have long wondered whether it is worth the trouble. Now that unification would bring a return to the—the European Council has confirmed that the “entire territory” of a united Ireland would be part of the union—they may be swayed in that direction.
Northern Ireland, though poorer than the south, is nothing like as badly off as East Germany was compared with the west. In 1989 West Germany boasted four times the east’sper person. But it also had four times its population, whereas the republic of Ireland is less than three times larger than the north . And the north’s economy is in a long-standing mess, scarred by the Troubles and “left behind” by deindustrialisation.
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