When is a majority not a majority? When it comes to honouring the result of a referendum on Irish unity, it seems.

At least that’s what Bertie Ahern and Leo Varadkar are both suggesting.

The former Taoiseach (and his potential successor-but-two) claim that a simple majority of Northern Ireland’s voters opting for Irish reunification in any future border poll should not be enough to automatically secure it.

Ahern recently told a Seanad committee on Brexit that the only time there should be a vote on unity is when ‘the nationalists and republicans and a respectable, sizeable amount of unionists and loyalists are in favour, and on the basis of consent.’

Varadkar made a similar point, claiming it was actually ‘alarming’ to hear talk of a border poll.

‘It is a return to a mind set in which a simple sectarian majority of 50 per cent plus one is enough to cause a change in the constitutional status of the North,’ he told Fine Gael members earlier this month.

The problem, of course, is that if 50 per cent, plus one, of the Northern Ireland electorate votes for reunification in a border poll, then that does indeed represent consent for change.

It has to.

Unless, of course, we’re now going to see the Good Friday Agreement retro-fitted with a fundamental precondition about the nature of what constitutes an acceptable majority?

In which case, we also need to alert the rest of the democratic world that a numerical majority in a vote is no longer good enough to determine the result.

Of course, both men are trying, in a somewhat cack-handed way, to emphasise that unionists should not be ‘bounced’ into a united Ireland.

Quite so, but no-one is trying to do that.

There is a big discussion to be had about Irish unity, dealing not only with an eventual vote, but also the hard practicalities of how it works and what accommodations are needed. All sides need to join in the conversation.

Obviously, this includes unionists. But at the end of the day, a democratic decision must still be honoured. The days of the unionist veto are over.

For now, that means republicans accepting British sovereignty. In time, it will mean unionists accepting Northern Ireland becomes part of a new Irish state.

The obvious supplementary to the argument put forward by Ahern and Varadkar is that if, say, 51 per cent voted for Irish unity in a future border poll and that isn’t deemed to be sufficient, then what would be?

52 per cent?

That’s the majority of Britons who voted to leave the European Union last June. That result is very definitely being honoured. A good enough percentage to result in a dramatic change to the UK’s constitutional standing. (And not for the first time, I might add. The referendum on creating a Welsh Assembly back in 1998 was won with just 50.5 per cent support).

Of course there is ongoing opposition to the decision, with British ‘Remainers’ still in mourning over the result. However, there is little real doubt the public has spoken and that Theresa May has a green light to press ahead.

So why, logically, would a referendum on Irish reunification play to a completely different set of rules?

It’s not particularly helpful to inject this kind of poorly thought through speculation into proceedings. If their suggestion was ever to be followed, how would militant republicans interpret this shifting of the goalposts?

It can only undermine those among them that have worked assiduously these past two decades to get everything onto an exclusively political track and keep it there. You can imagine the accusation: ‘You can’t trust the Brits or the Free Staters. And the Shinners have led us up the path’.

Clearly, there will be many unionists who do not want a united Ireland under any circumstances and never will. But that percentage will dwindle. Talking openly about the prospect of reunification will encourage pragmatists to begin to engage with and, perhaps, make their peace with the concept.

This process is not about convincing your average Orangemen to become GAA enthusiast. It is, however, about reaching out to the expanding pool of ‘persuadable’ voters who are rejecting binary nationalist/unionist identities.

Thirteen per cent of Northern Ireland’s electors voted for non-unionist and non-nationalist parties in the recent Assembly elections, while a fifth described themselves as ‘Northern Irish’ only in the last census.

Many beyond the nationalist and republican communities can see that Northern Ireland, as a concept, is utterly bankrupt. And when it loses €600m a year in EU funding, it will literally go bust, despite 56 per cent of Northern Ireland voters opting to remain in the EU.

Irish reunification increasingly represents the rational, evidence-based way forward.  When it comes to it, I foresee a significant chunk of these persuadables voting for unity.

For now, though, Northern Ireland is caught between the twin hypocrisies of an Irish state, which, to paraphrase St Augustine, wants the North ‘but not yet’ and a British state that cannot bring itself to say so but would, in its bones, dearly love to rid itself of its ‘Irish question’.

Frankly, many unionists already know all this. They can see where this is heading. Irish unity is now firmly in prospect. There has been more serious talk about it in the last six months than in the previous six decades.

But perhaps unionists would actively join in the conversation if the Dublin political class stopped focusing on how it will come about and began discussing why it should.

 

Kevin Meagher is author of the book ‘A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and how it will come about’ and a former special adviser to Labour Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward.