Thirty years ago, Philip McKinney wouldn’t have thought twice about how he would vote in a Border poll on Irish unification.
“Cut me down the middle, I would have been red, white and blue,” the former British soldier says.
Now, he is unsure.
“I think, sensibly, you have to look at the economics of it,” he says, though he adds: “I don’t think it will happen within the next 10 to 15 years.”
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Callum Borkowski’s outlook has changed too. Brought up in a Protestant, unionist background on the Ards Peninsula in south Down, he had “always had a British passport”.
“Just very recently, I’ve made the decision myself, as a 21-year-old, to get my own Irish passport, because I’ve felt more open ... to having an Irish identity,” he says.
How would he vote in a Border poll? “I actually don’t know.”
For the last 18 months, they have been among a group of people from a multiplicity of backgrounds who have been considering that question in conversations facilitated by Derry peacebuilding charity Holywell Trust.
Its Forward Thinking project – supported by the EU’s PeacePlus programme – seeks to enhance the discussion and debate around constitutional questions by providing accurate and informed information and facilitating constructive dialogue; it is the “antithesis of the recent soundbites” on Irish unity, says programme manager Sara Duddy.
In the last week, there has been no shortage of soundbites, thanks to the US president Donald Trump, who gave a full-throated endorsement of a united Ireland on his visit to Dublin and Doonbeg last weekend, repeatedly emphasising: “I’d love to see it unified” and “it is going to happen eventually”.
[ Donald Trump backs Irish unity in comments during Dublin visitOpens in new window ]
President Catherine Connolly later disclosed that Trump had asked her whether the question of Irish unity would be “resolved” in her lifetime during their private meeting last Saturday at Áras an Uachtaráin. “And I said I hoped it would,” she told reporters.
Trump’s visit was followed on Monday by a meeting of the first ministers of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, nationalists all, at a “landmark summit” – their words – at which they agreed: “Westminster’s time is coming to an end.”
Even former UK prime minister Gordon Brown told The Guardian last month: “In the long term, Ireland will be united.”
All evidence, some might say, that the dial is shifting.
Yet the UK government’s position has not changed, which holds the ultimate responsibility for the calling, or otherwise, of Border poll, as set down in the Belfast Agreement, the landmark 1998 agreement that underpins the Northern Ireland peace process.
Visiting Belfast only last month, British prime minister Andy Burnham was clear: a Border poll is “off the table”, he said.
[ British PM Andy Burnham says border poll on united Ireland ‘off the table’Opens in new window ]
Unionism was delighted with this reassurance. Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Gavin Robinson reminded Trump that Northern Ireland’s constitutional future “will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington”.
Under the “principle of consent ... enshrined in law through the Belfast Agreement”, the “only people whose decision counts are the people of Northern Ireland,” said the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Jon Burrows.
Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader Jim Allister said that “our constitutional future does not depend on him [Trump] or any other foreign dignitary”.
A spokesperson for Burnham gave the UK prime minister’s own response, saying there was no majority support for a referendum and one will not be held until that situation changed.
“None of these things make it [a united Ireland] more likely or less likely,” says political commentator and former DUP special adviser Tim Cairns, “just as Andy Burnham and what he said doesn’t make it more likely or less likely either. All it does is fill column inches.”
In other words, as you were – but not quite.
As Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said on Thursday, it was “a big week for the conversation around Irish reunification” and, for all their protestations otherwise, it clearly touched a nerve within political unionism, not least out of embarrassment at the DUP’s previous support for Trump.
Trump’s intervention “reflects that the conversation is happening,” says Prof John Doyle, vice president for research at Dublin City University, and author of the forthcoming book Before the Vote: Planning for a United Ireland, which will be published next week.
“To win or defeat [a Border poll], depending on the wording of the question”, the unionist parties “need the support of people who don’t vote for unionist parties.
“At the moment there’s a sort of complacence; it’s just a denial that there’s any momentum or any change in behaviour or people ...we will comfortably win it, we don’t need to make a pitch,” says Doyle.
“But I think the more this debate goes on, Ulster unionism does need to make a pitch.”
“I think unionism for far too long has relied on the fact that the case is just unimpeachable,” says Cairns.
“Unionism still acts as if the case for the union just makes itself. There’s a very positive case to be made and we should be making that case.”
Attempting to make that case is John Hanna, co-founder of pro-UK campaign group Uniting UK. He characterises the current debate as “nationalism talking to nationalism” and was reassured, in the wake of the week’s developments, by “the support from so many pro-union people from the rest of the UK”, such as the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
“They have been maybe a dormant voice in these conversations,” he says.
The Uniting UK campaign is not for the status quo, but for “a better union”.
How, then, to make the case for that union?
“It has to be UK-wide in its scope, not just focused on money from London, but focused on the many other benefits – family connections, education connections, sporting connections ... and that’s not to mention security and defence. There’s so much that unites us.”
McKinney (67) grew up in a Protestant, unionist household in Belfast. Serving alongside members of the Irish Defence Forces with the United Nations in Cyprus “really opened my eyes ... we played rugby together,” he says.
He joined the Alliance Party – he is a former Alliance councillor – “because we need to get away from the green and orange” – yet he acknowledges how difficult it is for many unionists to talk about a potential united Ireland.
“I think a lot of Protestants have in the back of their head: are we going to be persecuted? They have that fear,” he says.
“But I’ve said, if you ain’t in [the conversation], how can you discuss anything if you ain’t there, and I want to hear what these people have to say and what they have to offer me.”
At Forward Thinking, the conversation is continuing.
For a lot of young people, says Borkowski, “one thing that has potentially alienated them from the unionist cause is the social policies” – referring to the DUP’s “Christian social values” and their stance on abortion or LGBTQ rights.
“Unionism seems to go hand in hand with right-wing social policy,” he says, but “exploring other parties who are not as hard-line” can “lead them into different pathways where they discover other politics that actually are more progressive, but also not unionist”.
Cara Gilliland agrees. The 25-year-old from Derry is from a mixed background, raised Protestant but with “still quite an Irish cultural upbringing” and favours a united Ireland.
“I think a lot of people my age feel completely alienated from whatever’s going on in Stormont and Westminster,” she says.
“The DUP is a very clear example, like if you grow up in a loyalist or a British household, and you have progressive politics, or a different sexual identity ... you have no home there.”
“There are young voters who are certainly potential unionist voters, but they’re not current unionist voters ... the more mainstream conservative position of the three unionist parties is not appealing to them,” says Doyle.
“I don’t think they think they [the unionist leadership] need to do anything different ... to get to that 51 per cent, and I’m not sure that’s an accurate judgment.”
The DUP will meet in Belfast on Saturday for its annual conference, where the party’s focus will be the Assembly and council elections in May.
For Robinson and the DUP – amid the louder noise in the debate around Irish unification – it will be the same “business as usual, nothing to see here” position presented to members, with the focus firmly on the forthcoming elections.
After all, as Robinson put it in his speech to last year’s conference: “In no circumstance do I envisage the break-up of our union in my lifetime.”
