Adam Bolton: With Michelle O'Neill becoming Northern Ireland's first nationalist leader, is a united Ireland within reach? | Politics news

The confirmation of Michelle O'Neill as First Minister of Northern Ireland is historic.

She is the first representative of the national community committed to unity Irelandbecoming leader of the Stormont Assembly, an integral part of the devolved United Kingdom.

Mrs. O'Neill She is also complemented in the south by another woman, Mary Lou McDonaldThe president of their party, Sinn Fein, is the leader of the opposition in the Irish Parliament.

As polls indicate, MacDonald is on track to become Ireland's first female Prime Minister.

The two leaders often appear together and photos appear on the front pages of newspapers after the Democratic Unionist Party lifted its ban on re-forming a power-sharing government in the country. northern Ireland.

When asked about a united Ireland, Ms MacDonald sounded confident. “Historically, it's within walking distance,” she told reporters.

Is she right though? Not according to the Westminster government. The 76-page document enshrining the deal with the DUP and backed by MPs is called “Protecting the Union” and is couched in language confirming Northern Ireland’s constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom.

Ms. O'Neill and Ms. MacDonald clearly have electoral appeal.

Both women were raised in the Catholic community in Republican families. Ms O'Neill's father, Brendan Dorries, was detained as a temporary IRA prisoner and worked as an adviser to Sinn Féin.

Mrs MacDonald's middle-class credentials are far from complete: her great-uncle, James O'Connor, a member of the IRA, was executed by the British during the Irish Civil War. This is ancient history, as Ms. O'Neill and Ms. MacDonald would have us believe.

Dispel the shadow of the gunman

Sinn Féin's rise in popularity is partly due to attracting women, especially from Catholic backgrounds, to vote for it, precisely because they dispel the shadow of the militant. It seems to many that this mother of two children is an embodiment of the republican movement’s shift to seeking power through the ballot box instead of the bullet.

Unlike the previous generation of Sinn Féin leadership, represented by Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, neither was active during the so-called “armed struggle” during the Troubles. Ms O'Neill became a member of Sinn Féin at the age of 21 after signing the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998.

Around the same time, Macdonald, eight years her senior, briefly joined Fianna Fail, one of Ireland's two main parties. By 2002, she was unsuccessfully running for office as a Sinn Féin candidate. She has served for a term in the Sinn Féin European Parliament since 2004 and has been a member of the Irish Parliament for Dáil Éireann since 2011.

McDonald's is favored to be next

Ireland is scheduled to hold a general election in the next 12 months. Sinn Fein leads the opinion polls with 27%, ahead of current coalition partners Fine Gael with 20% and Fianna Fail with 17%.

This makes Ms MacDonald the favorite to be the next president. If so, Ireland would at least be united with female Irish Republican political leaders in both the North and the South.

Read more:
O'Neill's 'contests' claim Irish unity is 'decades' away.
O'Neill became the first Nationalist Prime Minister
Why NI's new First Minister is largely symbolic

Of course, Ms MacDonald may not be elected, and Ms O'Neill may not actually be First Minister for long.

Stormont could be suspended again. Ms O'Neill has already lost the deputy first minister's position twice when her DUP counterparts as first minister, Arlene Foster and Paul Givan, both resigned.

The communities refused to share power

The Northern Ireland Assembly has not met for nearly half its existence since 1998 because one of the two communities, unionist or nationalist, refused to share power in the executive with the other.

Under the Belfast Agreement, the First Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have equal powers. The top, symbolic position goes to the party that elects the largest number of members of the legislature.

Sinn Féin had 27 members of Parliament in the last elections. Ms O'Neill qualifies to be First Minister because the unionist vote is split between parties, with the DUP taking 25 MLAs and Ulster unionists nine.

The unrest stumbled to an end in the 1990s because neither side could win the terrorist conflict, which claimed more than 3,000 lives in about 30 years.

Prime Ministers have tried to appease the people of Northern Ireland

The rapprochement between the Irish and British governments was facilitated by both countries being members of the European Union, and the consequent modernization of Ireland.

The UK referendum vote in 2016 to leave the European Union was particularly problematic for Northern Ireland. A clear majority in the six counties voted unsuccessfully to remain, while the then-dominant Democratic Unionist Party was a staunch supporter of Brexit.

Since then, successive British prime ministers have tried to appease the Northern Irish public – and intermittently respect the UK's commitments under the Belfast Agreement – ​​by keeping Northern Ireland, uniquely, in the trading blocs of both the EU and the UK.

Support for a united Ireland grows

Support for a united Ireland has increased, with 57% of the rising generation of young people aged 18 to 24 in Northern Ireland favoring it in opinion polls. By no means all Catholics want a united Ireland, but demographically they outperform Protestants.

The DUP considered threats to the union to lie in measures that kept the trade border open “from north to south” with the EU, but enforced it “from east to west” with mainland Britain. This, combined with a largely unspoken objection to the idea of ​​a Roman Catholic republican woman being Northern Ireland's political leader, was behind their refusal, now lifted, to participate in devolved government.

For now, re-establishing Stormont may be a smart move by the Unionists.

The responsibilities of the position weakened the separatist desire

A united Ireland remains the automatic first article of any Sinn Féin manifesto. But I interviewed Ms. MacDonald during the election campaign, and found that she was much more interested in housing and inequality.

Mrs O'Neill was demanding Stormont's return so she could govern and solve Northern Ireland's problems. The Westminster government made funding for public services conditional on the existence of a functioning assembly.

From Scotland to Catalonia, the responsibilities of office have weakened secessionist desire. Public enthusiasm for major constitutional changes fades when voters just want whoever is in power to get things done.

The Good Friday Agreement states that a united Ireland will be achieved if there is a general desire on both sides of the border to hold a referendum and if the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland vote separately on it.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, 45, says we are “on the path” to a united Ireland “in my lifetime”. “It's not even on the horizon,” says Sir Keir Starmer, the British opposition leader.

Ms. Macdonald is a politician at her fingertips and speaks as an individual. The phrase “touch distance” sounds very close until you put it in the “historical context” of a half-millennium conflict.

Michelle O'Neill appears on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News from 8.30am this morning