Unity poll will finally come, but only after years of what we do best: talking
SEISMIC CHANGE is coming, just as soon as all of the other seismic change has blown through. Fatigued by entrenchment in Northern Irish politics, there is a danger of underestimating the significance of the Assembly election results, and the emergence of Sinn Féin as the largest party.
The party’s strength, the fresh difficulties stalking a frightened and resentful DUP, and the swell in support for the moderate Alliance Party, provide compelling evidence of change.
Sinn Féin are, of course, eager to see that transformation spread across the border, and calls for a unity poll have grown louder over the past week.
It is obvious that policy-makers and leaders in this State need to acknowledge this changed reality, and putting shape on the demand for a national conversation around the prospects and impacts of reunification is required.
Citizens’ assemblies too often feel like politicians sub-letting their responsibilities, but this is one instance in which the format makes sense.
Any public debate must be fully informed, though, and free of the influence of distorted historical wisdom and knee-jerk anti-Englishness.
Unsparing detail is necessary on the estimated cost of running the entire island, for example, a factor likely to jolt even the most romantic notions about the fourth green field.
And all this is before the spectrum of feeling in Northern society, and especially in unionism and loyalism, is considered.
If this issue is to be fully addressed, then the depth of complexity involved must be recognised.
THAT should temper talk about border polls within five years, but it may also put many people off engaging, for the time being at least.
Because if seismic change is coming to the island of Ireland, people are already dealing with a number of convulsive challenges in their lives.
The cost of living surges unchecked.
Housing is a crisis now so acute that nothing less than, well, a seismic change in State policy can start addressing it.
The impact on people of stumbling from two years of pandemic living into an inflationary spiral not seen for at least a generation is profound, too.
Domestic challenges are complicated by geopolitical fissures threatening to swallow up the old order. The Russian madness in Ukraine portends crises in the supply of fuel and food, and the difficulties posed by heating costs, come the autumn and winter, are already dark spectres on the horizon.
The Assembly elections, meanwhile, have sparked the undead issue of Brexit back to life, allowing a slippery British government to exploit it for leverage in its shape-shifting in Brussels.
The deployment of US support for the protocol this week was both a reminder of the ongoing relevance of American power to Irish interests in the North, but also an increasingly rare instance of unquestioned American power on the global stage.
Northern Ireland is one of a dwindling number of theatres in which an American president, even one as unimpressive as Joe
Biden, can command attention and wield influence.
Elsewhere, America’s status pales, which is itself partly a reflection of the enormous divisions that are widening there.
None of this is to dismiss the unity discussion, but rather place it in a wider framework that teems with other difficulties.
A reunified Ireland would be a momentous process, one to stand comparison with many of our current concerns.
But the point is that, for now, it is a notional one.
If that is to change, it will only be after years of discussion, illumination and agreement.
There is too much still to know, and until we do, informed, considered decisions are impossible.
As we learn, we must try and bear all our other anxieties.