Sinn Féin MEP Kathleen Funchion told a British minister in London on Monday that the British and Irish governments must “establish an appropriate date” for a Border poll because “I believe that the conditions laid out in the Good Friday Agreement [Belfast Agreement] for a referendum on Irish reunification have been met”.
Funchion was mistaken.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has no grounds to believe nationalist victory in a poll is “likely”, as the agreement requires and as Northern Secretary Hilary Benn has made clear.
But at least she framed her demand in terms of the agreement’s conditions. At least she addressed her call to the British government to a member of that government. Only the venue was inappropriate.
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Funchion was speaking at the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, a forum to discuss the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal. There are dedicated institutions for British and Irish parliamentarians to discuss the Belfast Agreement.
So the Sinn Féin MEP was a model of diplomacy compared to Labour leader Ivana Bacik. Addressing her party’s conference in Limerick last weekend, she said: “I am calling now on the Irish and British governments to set a clear timeline for the holding of a unity referendum.”
Bacik did not mention the Belfast Agreement in her 2,500-word speech, let alone tie her call to its conditions. Her only allusion to a timescale was to say “we know better than to run a referendum in haste”, suggesting she does not believe the conditions have been met.
Perhaps there is a difference between setting a date and setting a timeline.
Bacik may have meant agreeing a schedule of steps between deciding to hold a poll and a poll being held. That would not be quite so outrageously at odds with the agreement as simply demanding a date some time hence.
But the Labour leader indicated no such distinction. Had she been taking that much care with her words, she would not have said any of this in the first place.
Bacik’s carelessness is all the more lamentable given her party’s proud record on the peace process. As tánaiste and minister for foreign affairs in the 1990s, Labour leader Dick Spring negotiated the Downing Street Declaration and the IRA ceasefire, co-chaired the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and led the Irish delegation in the all-party talks that produced the Belfast Agreement.
Spring remains a party member but his views no longer fit the party line.
Speaking at Queen’s University Belfast last week to mark the 40th anniversary of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which he also negotiated, Spring said: “I don’t think that we’re ready for a referendum, or for debates. There’s an awful lot of work to be done. It’s a long way away.”
Bacik’s speech will reinforce a growing sense among unionists since Brexit that nationalism unilaterally rewrites the Belfast Agreement once it feels empowered to do so.
However, the speech will only upset unionists who noticed it. Most are not paying any more attention to a small party in the Republic than it is paying to them. The British government will ignore Bacik’s call – that is the only tactful response, as the Labour leader must have known.
[ Ivana Bacik speech heralds major step-change for LabourOpens in new window ]
The speech’s target audience was south of the Border. Its purpose was to position Labour in the bloc that won the presidential election, without conceding leadership of that bloc to Sinn Féin.
Bacik opened her remarks by praising the presidential campaign for having “brought together the parties of the Left – and other parties too. It united many of us who, for far too long, had focused on our differences”.
She closed by saying “we now have three bigger parties. And we have significant differences with each of those. But we are closely aligned in our values with the Green Party and Social Democrats.”
In other words, an association with Sinn Féin is useful but it should still be kept at arm’s length.
The obvious way to have something fundamental in common with Mary Lou McDonald’s party while distancing yourself from it on everything else is to proclaim your commitment to a united Ireland. You might be so keen to send this signal without getting bogged down in the details that you might casually drive a coach and horses through the Belfast Agreement.
If this is how the Left chooses to present a united front, there will be wider ramifications. The Government may feel compelled to respond in defence of the agreement, as may the British government, at least indirectly.
However, Government parties may still be pushed towards planning for a Border poll, as opposed to demanding one. Unionists would certainly notice that enough to be upset about it. Nationalists may not be happy either, as it becomes clear all this is politicking in the Republic, and little else.
