My party’s vision is for a republic. But why not, for example, have a role for the royals in terms of patronages and civic society?” he added.

Although he doesn’t say so explicitly, O’Leary’s view of reunification as a reset — defined by “renewal of our institutions, our relationships, our policies, our international alliances, our economic, cultural and social policies, our freedoms, and our rights” — looks very much like absorption of the North into the South with a face-lift for the latter. What is his preferred approach to reunification — a paradigm shift, or an enlarged and superficially edited version of the existing southern state, with the same neoliberal economic model? O’Leary gestures to the former but his analysis points us to the latter. A Song for Europe The six counties of Northern Ireland could not, would not, and should not fit into the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. Monarchist, Protestant, English-speaking people could not live in the Republican, Catholic and Gaelic nation-state. The statement was a slogan – a word derived from the Irish for “war cry”. It proclaimed an “impossibility”. This way of thinking is increasingly popular among Irish civic nationalists, who see a Little Englander–powered Brexit as the foil to an Ireland that embodies the best virtues of twenty-first century liberal democracy. Not everyone who votes Sinn Féin or SDLP will vote for Irish reunification, if and when the Northern referendum happens. Like everyone with a vote, they will want to know what is on offer, and what the benefits and costs are – both for themselves and their families and for their peoples. But cultural Catholics will have a choice, and their votes will matter – with increasingly decisive importance over the rest of this decade. By 2030, the decision will be theirs to make.He counterposes a failing Britain to a properly planned united Ireland, which he suggests will prove Ireland to be “judged a comparatively better democracy than its immediate neighbour.”

Perhaps more than any other scholar, O’Leary has thought through the permutations of a vote for and against reunification. Offering a sharp rejoinder to those who believe that a majority in favor of changing Northern Ireland’s status must be overwhelming, he insists that any majority should prevail, even if it is a narrow one, “because the alternative is that a narrow minority should prevail.” This is sage counsel on democratic principles that many on the island should heed. This week’s assembly election won’t settle any of the big constitutional issues that have loomed over the region since the creation of Northern Ireland 100 years ago. Indeed, there’s the chance it could aggravate them. But some are hoping it will one day be seen as a turning point. DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, center, with fellow election candidates | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

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You can understand why it fits their narrative to keep pushing the envelope,” said the 38-year-old MP for Belfast East. If Irish Republicanism, which is by nature a non-forgiving animal, had that ultimate upper hand, I think they couldn’t help themselves but settle scores,” he said. Sitting in his campaign office in North Belfast featuring a poster of the 1916 Proclamation of the Republic — the document marking the birth of Ireland’s modern struggle for independence — Sinn Féin’s director of elections, John Finucane, is cautiously optimistic about the party’s prospects. Nobody wanted Ireland’s new million-strong minority of those identifying as British to suffer the same discriminations Catholics had in the past, said Mr Finucane. Five journalists spent seven years writing “Lost Lives”, a chronicle of the deaths of some 3,500 people killed in the Northern Ireland conflict. Entries include interviews with witnesses to their deaths and with the victims’ families, some conducted decades later. The book is out of print. But a film released in 2020 includes extracts, read aloud and set to music. (It is available via the BBC in some countries.) The film’s depiction of shootings, abductions and bombings, accompanied by photographs and archive footage of families and funerals, many of them for children, is a harrowing and heartbreaking reminder of the trauma experienced by two communities. ■

The city’s Cathedral Quarter has transformed into an arts and hospitality hub that draws hordes of students. “There used to be nothing here except the odd dead body and lurking terrorist. There is a vitality about this place, it’s buzzing,” says Damien Corr, the area’s business improvement manager.Then there’s the issue of identity. Not only is Northern Ireland relatively large — with a population of 1.9 million, compared to about 5 million in the Republic — it includes an estimated 800,000 people who have traditionally identified as unionists, many of who want Northern Ireland to remain as “British as Finchley,” as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once put it. Sinn Féin won the most seats in this year’s local elections but polls show strong support for the boycott among DUP voters. Led by Mary Lou McDonald, the only all-island party in divided Ireland won the popular vote in the 2020 Irish general election But nowhere in the UK currently has worse waiting lists than Northern Ireland, which are twice as long as those in the Republic of Ireland, according to Irish Department of Health research.

The motivation behind this book by one of Ireland’s most distinguished intellectuals is his belief that Irish reunification is probable during the next decade or so. A referendum on Irish unity – or rather two referendums, one in Northern Ireland, the other in the Republic of Ireland – is provided for under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, as soon as it appears there is sufficient support. O’Leary believes that the dual referendums will be held within this decade and that all interested parties should start preparing now. One possibility is that devolution and Stormont could continue, perhaps for a transition period of 15 years, but with ultimate sovereignty transferring from London to Dublin. Another suggestion is that unionists left disproportionally because of the war officially launched by the Provisional IRA in 1971. That explanation is also difficult to evaluate, and faces a decisive objection: more Catholics died than Protestants in the conflict, proportionally and absolutely, and more violence and injuries took place in Catholic-majority districts of Northern Ireland. So if violence induced emigration then, at the margin, Catholics should have been more likely to leave than Protestants. Many Catholics did leave because of violence by the B Specials, the RUC, the Ulster Defence Regiment, the British army, and loyalist militia, as well as violence by republicans on their front doorsteps. Are most people aware of comparisons between the Republic and UK? For example, health and educational outcomes between North and South as well as economic performance, pensions, welfare, tax and GDP per jurisdiction? How much will these factors shape voting intentions? Since the last quarter of the 19th century such Catholics have mostly voted for nationalist parties with platforms that favour an autonomous or independent and united Ireland. Today the largest of these parties are Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). Not everyone who votes Sinn Féin or SDLP will vote for Irish reunification if and when the Northern referendum happens. Like everyone with a vote they will want to know what is on offer and what the benefits and costs are, both for themselves and their families and for their peoples. But cultural Catholics will have a choice, and their votes will matter – with increasingly decisive importance over the rest of this decade. By 2030, as I shall try to show, the decision will be theirs to make.Unionists have lived a large part of their lives fearing constitutional change, by virtue of the fact that we had very brutal terrorist campaigns towards that end,” he said in his office in Ballymena, approximately a 40-minute drive from Belfast. In a short section on the island’s future, O’Leary identified what he considered to be the dominant “mega-trends” in the world at large that might ensnare Ireland. Those trends included “de-democratization, plutocracy, inequality,” “the erosion of social-democratic and social-liberal parties,” and “the hollowing-out of political parties” in general. This gives us some valuable insight into O’Leary’s thinking on the EU (which is largely absent from Making Sense). The idea that Germany might one day submit to the sovereignty of the EU’s many smaller member states is quixotic. The likelihood of Irish unity will come as a surprise to many Canadians. It was virtually unthinkable in Ireland itself not so long ago. Two things explain the change. First, Protestants and unionists in Northern Ireland have lost their status as demographic or political majorities. Catholics and nationalists are not yet majorities, but the pivotal voters in a future referendum will be drawn from a middle group outside the traditional unionist and nationalist blocs. Second, that pivotal middle group is shifting toward support for Irish unity because of Brexit, the dramatic and increasing prosperity of the Republic of Ireland and the latter’s embrace of secularism and liberalism over Catholic conservatism. How do we encourage Dublin governments in the next decade to prepare properly for the momentous possibility of Irish reunification? Time for a Department of Reunification?