Whatever the outcome of today’s general election in the south – three or four-party coalition, three parties with a gaggle of Independents, or some other combination – it’s an exercise in self-determination in that part of the island.
The voters in the south will have elected their own government, whatever shape it takes. That’s something we can’t do here.
There was a British general election in July but, though unionists may try to frame it otherwise, we took no part in it.
Oh yes, people here voted in their thousands, but not for a party that could form a government.
OK, to be precise, the Conservatives polled 553 votes across the north, a 0.1% share of the vote. Labour doesn’t stand.
People here voted for local parties, most of whom presented preposterous, make-believe manifestos they’d never have a chance to implement.
The outcome was remarkable. Most people voted for Sinn Féin, which believes the British government has no right to be in Ireland.
Sinn Féin takes no part in British politics, arguing that if the British government has no right to interfere in Irish politics, why should it interfere in British politics?
In effect Sinn Féin won July’s election here, so the party in the north with most MPs doesn’t participate in Westminster politics.
The reality is the north didn’t participate in Britain’s election. July’s was not an exercise in self-determination as it was in Britain. People here can’t choose their own government, can’t defeat the government.
All they can do is elect the glorified county council that sits in Ruritanian splendour in the proto-fascist architectural extravaganza called Stormont.
The only power they have is to allocate the money sent from Westminster.
All real power is reserved to Westminster, which can overrule anything Stormont decides.
Westminster sends a proconsul here, currently a man people in Leeds elect, to impose decisions on people here, many of whose names he can’t pronounce and who live in places whose names he can’t pronounce and has never visited. Ludicrous.
It’s over a century since the British rejected the democratic outcome of the 1918 general election and blocked Irish self-determination.
The result is we’re left with a British border in Ireland, the last imperial border in Europe (if you don’t count the pre-imperial La Linea at Gibraltar), for all the other borders the British and French drew from 1919-23 have been altered.
John Hume used to say the Irish people want self-determination; they just disagree about how to exercise it.
At first that may seem a ridiculous observation to make, but think about it. Ulster Unionists wanted self-determination in 1912, even planned to set up a provisional government.
When they got it in 1921, many in the British government, including those who wrote King George V’s speech in June 1921 in Belfast city hall, hoped the Irish people would be able to work out how to govern themselves now that the British had left.
In that speech George V expressed his hope the meeting of the ‘northern parliament of Ireland’, as it was called, would be “the prelude of a day in which the Irish people, north and south, under one parliament or two, as those parliaments may themselves decide, shall work together in common love for Ireland upon the sure foundations of mutual justice and respect”.
That forlorn hope was that parliaments north and south would send representatives to the Council of Ireland and hammer out an agreement on Irish self-determination, but of course the Council of Ireland never met. It was a pipe dream then, but not now.
The tectonic plates in the north are shifting with increasing speed as successive elections since 2022 have demonstrated. The Good Friday Agreement provides the mechanism for reuniting Ireland.
The time is fast approaching when unionists will need to sit down with the Irish government to agree a way to express their self-determination – not available in a British context.
The sooner they do it the better because the more numbers they have, the more power of persuasion they will have.
It’s a big step to reconcile themselves with Dublin and live on equal terms with the rest of the people on the island but it’s the only direction of travel.