One Unheralded Possibility

 

Image courtesy People's World

Yesterday's UK general election has had a range of consequences, the most obvious (and predictable) of which is  a change of government.

There has been, however, a largely unacknowledged outcome in the seven counties of the United Kingdom across the Irish Sea. The counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone comprise the slice of Ireland that is part of the Union.

Back in 2022, after the shambles created by Brexit at the Irish border, the Democratic Unionists lost power in the Northern Ireland Assembly to Sinn Féin.

After the 2024 UK general election result, Sinn Féin's continued emergence as the party with the greatest number of seats will intensify debate around the region's future.

The complicated makeup of the governance of Northern Ireland makes it difficult to predict the constitutional future of the seven counties, but Brexit put a bomb under the old structures and split the Unionists. Sinn Féin seems disinclined to exploit the situation at the moment, and the attitude of the Irish Free State is unclear and malleable.

A poll conducted on unification in February 2020 indicated support south of the border, but not in the north.

Northern Ireland opinion

Republic of Ireland opinion

The architects of Brexit have broken some kind of record for creating unintended consequences.

If one of them is the unification of the emerald isle, it would be an ill wind after centuries of hate and violence.