Daniel McConnell: Varadkar's speech could see doubling down on differences in the North
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar: Sought and managed to do what all leaders hope to do in such a speech.
Rally their own troops, kick the Opposition for being hopeless, and suggest some mad and controversial idea that garners headlines and provokes a firestorm, thereby guaranteeing some noise around said conference.
Varadkar’s claim that a united Ireland is achievable in his lifetime certainly did all three of those things at once.
People were asking if Varadkar has forgotten what party he’s leader of.
‘Has he joined Sinn Féin?’ joked one minister.
On one level, the speech and its contents were easily dismissed.
Varadkar’s use of the phrase “in my lifetime” was interesting. It has the ring of something dramatic, when in reality, it means nothing.
It was a meaningless banality, but it sounded good.
Varadkar is still a reasonably young man and nobody knows how long he will live for.
Is it five years? Is it 50?
Other parts of the speech were not so easily rubbished.
Predictably enough, the speech contained a sharp kick in the shins to Sinn Féin, allowing Varadkar to continue on his strategy of polarising Irish politics between his party and the one led by Mary Lou McDonald.
Seeking in some ways, as he put it, to wrestle control of the issue away from Sinn Féin, Varadkar said he wanted his party to lead the discussion.
But, given their near-11 years in office, and their passive attitude toward the North for much of that time, there is justifiable suspicion as to the genuine nature of what the Tánaiste was saying.
Aside from the predictable playing to his base, Varadkar did pose some interesting questions as to what sort of unified Ireland do we would want to live in.
“It means the unification of the people of our island as well as territory of Ireland, and it is a legitimate political aspiration. The views of unionists must be acknowledged, understood, and respected, but no one group can have a veto on Ireland’s future.”
He spoke of Fine Gael establishing a branch in Northern Ireland with the same status as a constituency organisation.
“Not with a view to contesting elections, but with a view to recruiting members and building networks with like-minded people, including those in other parties,” he said. “We need to reach out to all sides. And we need a presence on the ground to do so.”
Varadkar, in the most significant part of his speech, said his party needs to “develop our own vision of what unification should look like”. Predictably enough, he dismissed what he called “the crude vision espoused by Sinn Féin”.
“It’s not an inclusive one — a cold form of republicanism, socialist, narrow nationalism, protectionist, anti-British, euro-critical, ourselves alone, 50% plus one and nobody else is needed. That is not a 21st-century vision.”
He said any move to unification must not be the annexation of the North.
“It means something more, a new state designed together, a new constitution and one that reflects the diversity of a bi-national or multi-national state in which almost a million people are British,” he said.
“Like the new South Africa, a rainbow nation, not just orange and green.”
Pointing to the logistical and political challenges, he said as a country we have to be willing to consider all that we’d be willing to change – new titles, shared symbols, how devolution in the North would fit into the new arrangements, a new Senate to strengthen the representation of minorities, the role and status of our languages, a new and closer
relationship with the United Kingdom.
Sinn Féin has pushed hard for a border poll, as permitted under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, since the commencement of Brexit — and those calls have loudened since the elimination of the unionist majority for the first time.
Ms McDonald has spoken of a tolerant and inclusive republic and has said she is willing to surrender the tricolour if necessary. In her party’s last election manifesto, and therefore its stated party policy, Sinn Féin said it wants to establish a joint Oireachtas committee, as well as an all-island Citizens’ Assembly, on Irish unity.
This is with a view to ultimately holding referendums in Ireland and the North on the subject.
Fianna Fáil, the self-declared republican party under Taoiseach Micheál Martin, has sought to strengthen its own reunification credentials through the creation of its shared-island unit, and will now feel the urge to ramp up its own rhetoric, given Varadkar’s recent comments.
The timing of his speech was somewhat dubious.
At a time when the Northern Executive is in crisis during a messy transition of power within the Democratic Unionist Party, amid heightened tensions around the Brexit process and the Northern Ireland protocol, Varadkar’s comments were high-risk and clearly, to an already hostile unionist community, they were incendiary.
Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie suggested the remarks were unhelpful at a time when Stormont is facing collapse in a row between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin over Irish-language legislation and loyalist tensions are simmering over post-Brexit arrangements.
“Good man, Leo, for bringing up Irish unity again when we are in a crisis,” he said.
Defending his comments yesterday, Varadkar said the debate on Irish unity does not belong to any one party, and denied that his comments were linked to the pending by-election in Dublin Bay South.
“Nobody’s talking much about Irish unity to me or unification,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the issues that people are talking about there are
different. It is Busconnects, it’s Sandymount cycle lanes, it’s housing, it’s the pandemic. That doesn’t mean that we can’t also talk about some of those bigger, longer-term issues.”
He also denied that his comments would further destabilise matters in Belfast.
“If they’re unable to put together an Executive in the next week, that would be because of relations between the parties in Northern Ireland, not for anything external, in my view, but I do think that they will be able to do that by the way. I would ask the counter question — when is the good time?”
For decades we have heard the sabre-rattling from parties here in the Republic the issue. But we have seen precious little discussion or debate as to what sort of united Ireland that would be.
While most if not all of the main parties publicly espouse a desire to see North and South reunite, they have done nothing about it.
Brexit has fundamentally shifted the landscape around the future of this
island and, as former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern recently said, a border poll may be desirable within a decade.
The patent danger is that with tensions running high, North and South, any significant move forward on this issue could yield nothing more than a doubling down on existing sectarian and tribal differences.
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