The Economist April 2nd 2022 Britain 23Britain and the eu, will hasten reunifica
tion, which would end those privileges.
As for prosperity, it is becoming clear
that Northern Ireland’s sweetheart deal
merely softens the blow of Brexit, rather
than averting it. The new way of doing
things is more costly, says Peter Summer
ton of McCulla, a haulier: after all, were it
not, it would already have become stan
dard without Brexit. Previously, Northern
Ireland’s retailers were mostly stocked
from distribution hubs in Great Britain.
But he has recently opened a new hub for a
major retailer in Mallusk, north of Belfast,
which is supplying both Northern Ireland
and Ireland with goods from the eu and
Great Britain. A team of 20 is required to
handle the new paperwork. A survey in
January 2022 from Manufacturing ni, an
industry group, found that only 7% of its
members saw Northern Ireland’s status as
an immediate opportunity, and only 18%
saw it as a longterm one.
According to Northern Ireland’s statis
tical agency, two percentage points of
Northern Ireland’s 3% growth since 2019
was accounted for by the services sector,
and 0.6 percentage points by the public
sector. Production and construction each
contributed 0.2 percentage points. That
somewhat undermines the thesis that the
economy boomed in 2021 because of su
perior access for goods going to the eu and
Britain. Economists at Strathclyde Univer
sity have estimated that, relative to no
Brexit, in the long term Northern Ireland’s
investment will be depressed by 3.3%, its
gdp by 2.6% and real wages by 3.9%.
That bodes ill for consent to unity in the
Republic, where constitutional changes
require a referendum, and where it is usual
to set out proposals in great detail before
any vote. Although unification has broad
political support, once pollsters mention
the price tag, respondents go cold.
Analysis by the Institute for Govern
ment, a thinktank in London, suggests
that in the 201819 fiscal year, Northern Ire
land’s publicsector deficit was 19% of its
gdp, or £9.4bn ($12.4bn) more than its peo
ple paid in taxes—and that is before the
protocol was signed or any longrun effects
of Brexit could become apparent. For the
United Kingdom, that is 0.4% of gdp; for
Ireland, it is 5%. “If you follow the German
unification model and you rerate every
thing then the burden becomes seven or
eight per cent of national income,” says
John Fitzgerald of Trinity College Dublin.
Cost is not the only reason citizens of
the Republic might reject unification. They
generally like the idea of more northsouth
trade, says Mary Murphy of University Col
lege Cork, but that sentiment is rather
shallow. Unification would mean harmo
nising institutions, she points out, from
the army and police to health and educa
tion systems. The Republic could not sim
ply expect NorthernIreland to fall into
line. Its population accounts for 3% of that
of the United Kingdom, but would be 28%
of a united Ireland. The most basic mat
ters, such as whether the new state would
be unitary or whether Northern Ireland
would have some form of devolution from
Dublin, have barely been discussed. “If
you’ve had this 800year conflict with ex
ternal forces on this island, you’d think
there’d be a plan so persuasive that even
Orangemen would give it a read,” says Peter
Shirlow of the University of Liverpool. “But
there’s nothing there.”
North of the border, attitudes towards
reunification are largely a matter of the
heart, rather than the head. That is not so
unusual internationally: Brexit showed
that people do not always vote with their
wallets; and Germany, that divided coun
tries can be reunited despite great dispar
ities and vast cost. For nationalists, uniting
contentiously divided territory has a po
werful patriotic allure. Unionists, too,
identify strongly with their political posi
tion. Vernon Bogdanor, a constitutional
expert at King’s College London, remarks
on the difference between the knowledge
able and positive representation of North
ern Ireland’s nationalists by the Irish gov
ernment and even the eu, and how poorly
understood unionists are in Westminster.
That makes unionists think they have to be
militant to be heard, he says.
When Ireland was partitioned in 1921,
the position of the border was chosen to
create a Northern Ireland populous
enough to be viable, but small enough to be
dominated by Protestants, who were con
centrated in the island’s northeast. Cen
sus results due this autumn are expected to
show that, a century later, Protestants are
now outnumbered by Catholics. This wor
ries many Protestants, yet both the old
tribes are now minorities, with growing
numbers of other faiths or none. A new and growing cohort of swing vot
ers regard themselves as in neither camp,
and many may be attracted to voting for
unification because it would mean rejoin
ing the eu. Moreover, to be Catholic no lon
ger automatically equates to wanting uni
fication—or to wanting it immediately. Re
search by Mr Shirlow shows that support
for the union is less siloed than is support
for reunification: “More Catholics support
the union than Protestants support unity.”
When the Good Friday Agreement was
signed, a united Ireland looked like a mat
ter for the distant future. The deal was
vague on when a vote might happen, sim
ply saying that the British government
would call one if a majority in Northern
Ireland looked likely to vote in favour. That
moment has not arrived. A poll published
in December found that a small majority of
54% wanted to remain part of the United
Kingdom. (Other polls have found some
what larger prounion shares.) For their
part, residents of mainland Britain seem
not to care much one way or the other. A
survey in April 2021 found that 46% would
not be bothered if Northern Ireland left,
and 11% would be pleased.
That poll in December also found that
51% in Northern Ireland thought that a ref
erendum in a decade’s time would favour
unification. Another the previous month
had found that 60% in the Republic would
vote for a united Ireland—but also that
support for unification fell to 41% when
the cost was spelled out in the form of
higher taxes. As long as support remains so
shallow in the Republic, and so finely bal
anced in Northern Ireland, it is highly un
likely that any government, whether in
Dublin, Stormont or Westminster, would
consider calling a vote. If they did, how
ever, an outcome that would have seemed
inconceivable when the island was parti
tioned a century ago is no longer so: that
Northern Ireland would say “yes please”,
and the Republic would say “no thanks”.What’s done is done
In one sense Brexit makes a united Ireland
seem more likely than it used to, because it
has unsettled previously apathetic voters.
It has also made it harder, both by increas
ing the cost to the Republic and by provid
ing a worked example of the difficulties of
radical constitutional change. The
post2016 years have been divisive for Brit
ish society, but there was never the slight
est possibility that the losing side in the
Brexit referendum would take up arms. In
Northern Ireland it might, however, espe
cially if a vote for reunification was close
and contested. The Irish border has sur
vived for a century for the same reason it
was first drawn: an Ireland united and in
dependent of Britain againstthewishes of
hundreds of thousands ofunionists would
probably result in civil war.nPray for a bright, brand new day