The Twelfth, the annual commemoration of a centuries-old military victory of a Protestant king over a Catholic one, is again being celebrated with pomp and ceremony in Northern Ireland.
However, this year the celebration across the North’s Protestant community comes against the political backdrop of a fracturing within unionism in the wake of last week’s Westminster elections.
The vote made Sinn Féin Northern Ireland’s largest party in the House of Commons (though it does not take its seats there), in addition to being the largest party across the councils and assembly.
Never before has unionism been required to speak with one voice in the face of an emboldened nationalist opposition.
The election has created a moment of self-reflection for unionism. First it needs to decide what it wants to say and how it wants to say it – and not just to old traditional audiences but to younger people who are less interested in stories of Ulster’s history, symbols or flags.
Given that it had reigned supreme for almost 30 years since overtaking the Ulster Unionist Party in the early 2000s, the story of the election was the Democratic Unionist Party’s losses, particularly Ian Paisley Junior’s unexpected defeat in North Antrim to the Traditional unionist Voice’s Jim Allister and the loss of a seat held by a Paisley for 54 years.
The DUP’s vote share was eaten from the other side too by the more liberal Ulster Unionist Robin Swann in South Antrim, while the loss to Alliance of the Lagan Valley seat once held by former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson hurt. The DUP finished the election with five seats, down from eight.
The fracturing of the unionist vote did not lead to Sinn Féin gains – the nationalist party took seven seats, the same number it won in 2019 – but it was taken by those in favour of Irish unity as evidence that the tide was turning in their direction and that a border referendum is coming.
None of this is necessarily so. Newly-elected British prime minister Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is a soft unionist and has little desire to see his term in office dominated by a constitutional question posed by a poll on Irish unification.
But what would force his hand?
The Belfast Agreement declares that a poll should be held when the Northern Ireland Secretary of State believes that “it appears likely” that a unity referendum would be victorious.
It is silent on how that judgment should be made – by election results, vote share, opinion polls or census figures, or a combination of all. This is an issue requiring clarification, in the words of former taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Academic Peter Shirlow, who hails from a Protestant background but never shy of speaking home truths to unionism, is equally dismissive of those who argue that a border poll will inevitably be held and that it will inevitably be won.
This fails to understand Northern Irish society today, he says.
“Support for unity is lowest among young people. They haven’t grown up in the same sectarian environment as their parents. They socialise, they mix, they work together,” said Shirlow, the director of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool.
Today the majority of Northern Ireland’s population will judge unity by the effect it could have but also on whether Northern Ireland “is working”, the academic says. The numbers voting for avowedly pro-unification parties – Sinn Féin, the SDLP, People Before Profit and Aontú – have fallen from more than 345,000 in 2001 to 315,000 today.
Such numbers do not count the votes for the Alliance Party, which deflects attempts to declare its position on Irish unity by arguing that Northern Ireland must be made to work as it is.
Sinn Féin is dominant, but that has been at the expense of the SDLP. Equally, the losses this time suffered by the DUP were within unionism, or to the Alliance, not to openly pro-unity nationalist parties.
Former DUP adviser David Graham manages to be confident and pessimistic at the same time. Faced with a border poll, if it happened, Graham believes that unionism “is on fairly safe ground”.
“I am confident that if a poll was called tomorrow, there is not a compelling case for unity. The vote share of nationalists/republicans has not shifted much since 1998,” he said.
He believes political unionism is in a mess, divided by splits and a failure to create a vehicle similar to the pro-unity Ireland’s Future campaign group to “sell the union, and constitutional security for the future”.
The referendum question, if ever put, will be decided by a fifth of those living in Northern Ireland, who “do not necessarily define themselves as Protestant, or Catholic, even unionist, or nationalist”, says Graham.
Here, the divisions within unionism damage its calling card.
[ The fall of Ian Paisley junior and the house of PaisleyOpens in new window ]
“In footballing terms, the DUP and to its own extent the UUP, have been outmuscled in defence, overrun in midfield and impotent in attack,” said the former DUP adviser and councillor.
Privately, a former DUP special adviser, not Graham, argues that the DUP’s gains in the 1990s came when Peter Robinson realised that young people had to be brought into key positions.
“Then, Ulster Unionist MPs looked like a retirement party on a day trip to London. The DUP captured that, saying that these were crusty old men who had been around forever saying the same old things,” the source said.
Today, much of that energy has dissipated. The 1990s “newbies” are still there, but now in their 50s, while older figures then, such as Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson are now in their early seventies.
“There has been little, or no succession planning,” said the source.
Comparatively more liberal, Gavin Robinson is cut from a different cloth to Campbell and Wilson, but though the DUP’s leader, he is not yet in charge. He will have major calls to make in the next year as the party prepares for 2027 Assembly elections.
Unionism has a problem, though, in that “selling the status quo is always difficult, while nationalism is able for now to hide the divisions within it about what a united Ireland would look like, but it would be bitter, divisive afterwards”, the source said.
Mervyn Gibson, the Orange Order’s grand secretary, is not alone in believing that unionism of all hues must better make the case for the continuation of the union with Great Britain.
People like him will “always be unionist by conviction, by belief”, he says.
“But we have to persuade others – nationalists, new immigrant communities, those who hold no flag, who maybe don’t share the same moral values as us of its benefits,” he said.
“It’s something we’ve probably taken for granted over the years. We’ve been preoccupied with other things. Our energies need to go into promoting the union, not defending it against nationalism.”
Support in Northern Ireland for a border poll, according to data expert Philip McGuinness, peaked in the months before the Windsor Framework – the 2023 agreement setting out the most recent post-Brexit trading for Northern Ireland – and has fallen back a little since the Brexit crisis went down the news headlines.
Today, the newly-installed British government wants to improve relations with Brussels, not to enter into new conflicts and it has a desire, too, to ease imports of foods into Great Britain through ports in the east of England.
Food imports have been affected by tougher import rules into Britain earlier this year at such ports, with many continental importers simply stopping supplying. Imports from Ireland face more paperwork too but not yet to the same scale.
[ Starmer’s arrival at Number 10 will bring a reset in Anglo-Irish relationsOpens in new window ]
Solutions are not easy. A veterinary agreement would fix the issue and, additionally, get rid of many of the irritants that exist on trade between Northern Ireland and Britain. However, that would require London accepting alignment with Brussels’ rules, which would be unpalatable for many.
If some solution occurred, it would remove many of the practical objections unionists and others have to the Windsor Framework for interfering with UK common market rules, even if their principled objections remained.
Though his dislike of the principle of the existing London-Brussels agreements remains, Mervyn Gibson believes that changes bringing the UK more into line with Brussels “would certainly ease the situation”.
For now, he is willing to give Starmer a fair try.
“The Conservatives were a disaster at all levels. They just continually failed to keep their promises. Promises lasted only until the next crisis, whatever they needed to say to get over today’s crisis,” he said.
“So, let’s see how Labour behaves. Starmer’s only just in. Let’s give them a chance to listen to unionism.
“We’re not looking at any special treatment. We just want to treat it like any other part of the Union. Yes, in many, many years time there will be a border poll. Let’s concentrate on getting out and working to show people the benefits of the Union in the meantime.”
Historically, Labour has always been better for unionists, says Queen’s academic, Prof Graham Walker, noting how former British prime minister Clement Attlee secured Northern Ireland’s place in the Union after 1949 by giving a Unionist-controlled Stormont a veto, rather than leaving it to Northern voters in any subsequent referendum. Attlee essentially copper-fastened unionist domination in Northern politics.
“They need to be grown up about it. They need to take Keir Starmer at face value when he says that he wants to make the union work better for everyone,” Walker said.
The Labour manifesto pledged the creation of a Council of the Regions and the Nations across the United Kingdom which “if it happens is a clear attempt, I think, to try to bind together the different parts of the union”.
This requires unionist parties, but especially the DUP, to engage with pro-union, middle-ground voices in Britain, though that is something which unionism has rarely been good at doing.
Even if they become better at explaining their case, it does not mean that the message will necessarily be more popular among people in Britain largely uninterested in the Union, and even less so in Northern Ireland.
Equally, the DUP must choose its Westminster allies. Jim Allister is bedding down with Reform, the populist right-wing party led by Nigel Farage.
The version of the Conservative Party that emerges from its disastrous Westminster election is yet to be decided, but it is unlikely to occupy the centre ground.
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