The most compelling reason to believe that Irish unity might happen is not that nationalists are likely to win a border poll, but that a hapless unionism might lose it.
Ian Paisley Jr is not a stupid man, but this week he set out a monumentally stupid idea.
In attempting to strengthen the Union, he weakened it, just as his party, the DUP, has been doing for years.
The North Antrim MP’s father said in 1996: “I am a democrat: I have made it clear that if the people were to vote for a united Ireland, I would accept it.”
Admittedly, that was a fairly easy thing to say at a point where it was clear that, even in Dr Paisley’s long lifetime, there was no credible possibility that the majority in Northern Ireland would shift to support unity.
Nevertheless, what the DUP founder said almost three decades ago was consistent with how unionism has viewed the basis for Northern Ireland’s legitimacy since its foundation in 1921. Where nationalists argued that partition was undemocratic because a huge majority on the island as a whole wanted independence from Britain, unionism insisted that the concentration of unionists in the six north eastern counties meant they should be able to remain within the UK.
In 1998, nationalism came to essentially accept that logic; forcing a northern majority into a united Ireland against their will would be impossible, and probably undesirable, even if it could be done.
However, Sinn Fein objected, and it was for this reason that the party did not sign up to the Good Friday Agreement along with the other parties, only doing so weeks later as the shifting public mood became clear.
Eight days after Good Friday in 1998, Gerry Adams told the Sinn Fein ard fheis that other parties had “already subscribed to a unionist veto described euphemistically as ‘consent’. We disagree with that position.”
The acceptance by nationalism of the principle of consent — that Irish unity would only come about if a majority in Northern Ireland wanted that to be so — was unquestionably David Trimble’s greatest achievement for unionism in the 1998 deal.
This week, it was not Sinn Fein, the SDLP, or the Irish government that tried to undermine that key unionist achievement; it was the DUP.
Mr Paisley tabled a private members’ bill in the House of Commons which sought to rewrite the basis for Northern Ireland’s existence. The Referendums (Supermajority) Bill attempts to alter the law so that a plebiscite on major UK constitutional change could only succeed if a much higher percentage of voters supported such change.
Mr Paisley has not yet defined what that majority should be, and the bill has not even been published on the House of Commons website.
In many ways, neither of those factors matter because this is fantasy legislation which will never get anywhere near the statute book.
But in revealing the DUP’s fantasy, it has undermined the Union. While Irish unity is likely far further away than the public perceive, it is perception which counts in how this is viewed.
Among soft nationalists who might be persuaded to vote for the Union on pragmatic grounds, this is seen as a pathetically desperate attempt by unionism to move the goal posts just as they were bearing down on an undefended goalmouth.
Mark Durkan, one of the key SDLP negotiators in 1998, described Mr Paisley’s proposal as “another pretentious misadventure” by the DUP.
Among constitutionally unaligned voters — the cohort that will decide the outcome of a future border poll — the idea looks similarly ham-fisted, giving credibility to the idea that unionism is worried about losing a referendum.
It is another example of Jamie Bryson acting as the DUP’s de facto director of policy. The idea of requiring a supermajority in a border poll emerged from the loyalist activist in August when he lodged with the Oireachtas a five-page submission on behalf of Unionist Voice Policy Studies, arguing that the Good Friday Agreement does not specify the nature of the majority required for a border poll to be won by nationalism.
Noting that it said “a majority” rather than “the majority”, Mr Bryson argued that “therefore plainly such a majority may legitimately be required to be a weighted or supermajority”.
This week, Mr Paisley made an almost identical argument. Speaking on the Nolan Show, he said that the proposal would improve political stability, adding: “Let’s have a protection in law that makes sure that the overwhelming majority of people are agreed on change”.
Mr Paisley asked: “Is that 50% plus one of those eligible to vote, or only 50% plus one of those who turn out to vote? That is the difference… that was the distinction the Belfast Agreement made; it said about a majority of the people of Northern Ireland — it didn’t say a majority of only those people who turned out to vote… this is what the precious Belfast Agreement says.”
There are two gaping holes in this idea. The first is the claim that the agreement never stated a simple majority could deliver Irish unity.
In fact, schedule one of annex A of the agreement says that the test for the calling of a mandatory border poll is that the secretary of state must believe “a majority of those voting” would support Irish unity.
It would be absurd to set that as the test if there was any possibility that the real threshold was 60% or 70% or whatever other number was acceptable to the DUP.
And the Northern Ireland Act 1998 — the legislation which enacted the agreement — uses the phrase “a majority” to refer to MLAs voting in Stormont, something which has always been interpreted as a simple majority in line with the natural and ordinary meaning of those words.
As with the Belfast Agreement, when the government last called a border poll in 1973, Ted Heath used “a majority” and “the majority” interchangeably when he addressed the Commons.
It is not that asking for a supermajority for momentous constitutional change is in itself improper. Several countries have such a rule and, as Mr Paisley highlighted, the UK had done so for the Scottish referendum on devolution in 1979. That referendum saw 51.6% vote for devolution, but with the rules requiring a majority of electors and not just a majority of voters to back the change, it fell.
However, Northern Ireland is very different. It was founded on the principle that a majority of those within its border wanted the link with Britain to endure. The one referendum on the issue was fought on that basis, and it was the clear understanding of everyone involved in the 1998 agreement that those were the rules.
Trying to change that at a time when unionism is weaker than at any point in Northern Ireland’s 101-year history not only looks desperate, but doesn’t stand up to basic logical or historical scrutiny.
There is another aspect of this which is significant. Dismissing the idea that he was on some sort of solo run, Mr Paisley made clear that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson backs the idea, saying: “This has been endorsed by the party.”
In increasingly following Mr Bryson’s lead, the DUP is not only exposing its own dearth of ideas but is wandering into extreme incoherence. Mr Bryson has quite openly expressed his opposition to the agreement and has appeared to support an integrationist view of the Union.
At one extreme, such an ideology would say that the entire UK should have to decide before any one of its constituent nations leaves the Union and thus Mr Bryson’s argument is at least partly consistent with his own worldview.
But that is not the DUP’s ideology. It is a devolutionist party, yet is, often it seems through ignorance, making arguments that contradict its own professed position.
It is true, as Mr Paisley said this week, that senior nationalists have questioned the wisdom of a border poll bringing about a united Ireland in which 49.9% of those in Northern Ireland had voted for the Union.
Three years ago, former SDLP deputy first minister Seamus Mallon warned that such a result could be “murderous”. A border poll held in a “simplistic 50% plus one format” was one which “won’t work and it is dangerous”, he said. Leo Varadkar has similarly questioned the wisdom of Irish unity secured via a simple narrow majority.
Unquestionably, an outcome of that nature would be horribly destabilising — especially if it was accompanied by allegations of vote stealing, something the SDLP has accused Sinn Fein of (and they have denied) as recently as 2017.
But it is the only basis on which Northern Ireland can exist. A country where a majority of its inhabitants do not want it to exist is preposterous and unsustainable.
A border poll in which something like 55% of people voted for unity only to find their wishes rebuffed would be ungovernable. Civil disobedience, a refusal to pay taxes and street protests would be met with international pressure on the UK to allow Irish unity.
For unionism’s biggest party to be putting its energy into this argument is self-defeating. The DUP is like a football team which is two goals up, but where the team is standing arguing with the referee about the rules rather than attempting to defend as the opposition pour forward into their half.
Attempting to move the goalposts is tempting for young children insufficiently mature to accept that life involves losing as well as winning.
It’s not a credible political strategy, much less the basis on which a country can coherently exist.