FF link to SDLP makes unionist unity begin to look inevitable
Move will kill off a budding, possibly successful relationship between the SDLP and UUP
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin and SDLP leader Colum Eastwood at a joint press conference in Belfast. Photograph: Niall Carson/Press Association
Politics in Northern Ireland has always obeyed Newton’s third law: “for everything that they do, there must be an equal and opposite reaction from us.” It makes life reasonably easy for those of us who are paid to observe the political and electoral process, but it also explains why things rarely change, even when we sometimes think they have.
So the news that the SDLP and Fianna Fáil have forged a closer link, albeit not a merger, got me thinking about Newton again. There is no doubt in my mind that unionists, of every variety, will view the link as just another manifestation of the pan-nationalist front (a phrase coined by former UUP deputy leader John Taylor, in November 1993, to describe the news that a report of talks between John Hume and Gerry Adams had been forwarded to taoiseach Albert Reynolds and minister for foreign affairs Dick Spring). Taylor viewed the development, as did most unionists, as an attempt by the Irish government together with local nationalist and republican parties to remove Northern Ireland from the UK.