With the leader of the main Unionist party applauding speeches calling the GFA 'iniquitous' and 'deceit' are the upcoming elections a test for the seminal agreement?
It's hard to know what will happen if the DUP manage to get their vote out and maintain the majority vote.
They were able to do it with Brexit 😉 The political chaos that ensued in the UK after that vote was carried out suggested that there was no plan. Well, there definitely was no plan laid, because UK referendum law is an absolute shambles where you don't have to make any concrete proposals or give real detail. So it seemed that voters were basically in favour of Brexit in principle, i.e. in favour of it whatever it meant in their own minds, based on whoever they were listening to.
So, I suppose the same thing would currently apply in NI in the sense that when you put the UI question to them, their opinion of it is based in their imagination. Would approval go up if a plan were put forward? I don't know, but one thing I'm fairly certain of is that any plan put forward will not get cross-community agreement. But such a plan would at least need cross-border agreement with the Irish government, since there are two sides to the border poll. In fact, if a border poll ever passed, Dublin would have to be in the driving seat. That would be easiest if it were an SF government down here as well, but that's obviously not a given.
Anyway, Sinn Fein are always saying that it's time to have a real conversation about a UI. I say maybe they should put out a detailed plan of their own, to the extent of what the SNP did for the Scottish referendum, down to what thickness of paper civil servants shall use, and then tweak it from there.
I've read on twitter about how SF are like LePen and Orban. I mean to some Sinn Fein are woke leftists and then to others their fascists. 🤔
He/she wants you to rise to those type of taunts.
Its nothing to do with religion... has not being for a long time... do you think any of the voilent people were christian...
There is only one political ideology on the decline in NI - unionism.
How do you assess views by asking people if they want something nebulous or abstract?
Planning needs to begin and a proposal/plan formed...then assess who wants to be involved.
That is the next step and I think you will see that happen soon.
But if the name of the game is ultimately persuading even a small portion of the PUL population to vote for a UI. I'm struggling to see what can be done, in practical terms. I mean the Republic is already as secular as any other country, pretty much, and it doesn't seem to have impressed many of them. Okay Alliance voting types are not anti-Catholic bigots and are not hostile to the Republic, but to me it's still a massive leap from there to actually voting to leave the UK and join the Republic.
Maybe to win a border poll you'll just have fall back on 'Catholics outbreeding Protestants'...I wonder are SF hoping the next Pope is an ultra-conservative who reissues Humanae Vitae...
Then one every 7 years
For me thats about right... normal houses are about half the price...i was talking to a lady 2 weeks ago and she said a modest terrace house around Belfast about £160,000... free health service... our system will get ba big shake if we ever get UI...
The one thing is money buy s everything and will sort this... US...UK... EU... i think there will have to be border poll during this assembley term... cannot let opportunity slip...
You cannot gauge support for a UI when no plan for a UI has been presented. It's not a fair nor rational way to approach the matter.
"We stopped 100 random people on the street who were too gormless to just breeze past us and asked their opinion on something they rarely think about."
Those types of poll wouldn't necessarily be the most scientific way gauging anything, as methodology could vary wildly, but the sense I'm getting is that there isn't anything close to a majority support for a UI within NI right now. I don't know what the future might bring or how some unforeseen event may dramatically affect the calculus, but as I write this, I don't see it from the noises I'm hearing from the North. I do think that the constitutional status of NI will one day change, but when and to what, I'm not sure. Maybe non-sectarian politics will carry on growing in the North and the region one day decides that it's better off as an independent state.
The British policy of normalisation worked a treat, even got the shinners signed up
I just seen BBC news and apparently only 30 to 40% of people in Northern Ireland want a united Ireland, that has to be false, they done a poll 2 years ago and it was 51% for unity and 49% to stay as part of the uk
Aodhan O’Riordon was another woke leftie campaigning for Pat catney- it shows the arrogance really of these people that they’d swan up north to tell people what’s good for them.
It also shows how little they do here if they have time and the resources for this.
It was all over Twitter, MM, Neale Richmond and Ivana Bacik all campaigning for SDLP. The same parties campaigned for Brid Rogers(SDLP) against SF years ago and got the same result
They say give him enough rope he will hang himself... they are making eejits of themselves and us...
I’m not sure how anyone could think having any of those bozzos anywhere near your voters could help. No wonder they lost 4 seats.
Also that Dodds or Dolores truck poster was utterly ridiculous- that kind of over personalised negative campaigning wouldn’t really impress the kind of moderate voters that vote SDLP go for. Say what you like about Dodds- she was an MEP, has a big vote base and name recognition. I wouldn’t vote for her but she isn’t the worst out of the DUP by any means. Totally missed the point
Those three parties tweeted images of their members canvassing with the SDLP.
That will take starting right now Furze, not kicking the ball down the road for another generation.
Has it been confirmed that anyone actively involved in politics here canvesed in another country... i be surprised if this happened... If this is the case they need to be sacked immediately from whatever role they have...
Do you want to bring unionists as a group with you? Or do you just wanna tell them to fcuk off back across the Irish Sea?
Knowing you, I think the former. And that will take patience and making things work together. Who above said that you need a United Northern Ireland first!!
No. Now way would it pass in NI as of now.
As for the south, your 80% figure is wildly optimistic. That's like the question on the annual census that used to be 'Can you speak Irish?' Large numbers filled in yes out of some wishy washy sentimental thinking, but in reality would barely remember more than a cupla focail of school Irish.
Nobody has seriously addressed what a UI might look like for southern voters. What concesssions, what costs and so on. The outcome is far from certain in the cold light of day.
Screw what up exactly? A failed state where a belligerent party take the ball home just because they cannot tolerate equality?
Yes change is coming but it's dripping slowly. Rush it and you'll screw it up.
I think that would be true where and when it comes down to that, but my reckoning was 37 to 36 in favour of Unionism, anyway, making 73, plus the 17 seats for the AP. The two independent candidates who were elected are both Unionist, as I understand it.
I would have had PBP ON THE Nationalist side
A good majority of Alliance votes transfer to pro-UI parties/MLAs - that cannot be ignored. The so-called 'middle ground' is not in the Irish Sea, it's in Ireland where the Irish people live. If forced to choose between aligning with Ireland in the EU, or a UK led by Eton arseholes adrift from Europe, I reckon 90% of Alliance voters will choose the former.
The next census will be another huge psychological shock for Unionism. Young people from a PUL background are not stupid and will know that it is in their interests to build goodwill with their nationalist neighbours and keep the differences between north and south to a minimum as they'll understand the border is never coming back and the orange statelet is dead.
It's not a narrative it's literally how it's worded in the GFA. The NI sec can do it “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland".
The lack of specificity is imo one of the failings of the document. Along with no concrete process being in place or even guidelies for how we get from a border poll to a UI.
However I can see why it is the way it is as they need to fudge some things to get unionists buy in.
It would be an all Ireland poll and while the Northern part would be close to call the Republic one would probably be in the 80% or so for a UI, this would be hard to stomach for FFG or the Greens .
This narrative that we have to see that a border poll will reasonably pass to have one seems like nonsense. The bar is lower than that, we just have to see that there would be a slim possibility of it passing to run it. We don't need a poll to decide if we can have a poll? That seem a bit undemocratic.
Seems the whole nationalists being the biggest party has taken the whole narrative.
Unionism still got more votes. Sinn fein still has the same number of seats. Really, it's a fracturing of the unionist vote.
Really, being the biggest party is meaningless. Its like saying someone owning 25% of a company has a massive hold on things just because they're the biggest single shareholder.
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