The elevation of Michelle O’Neill as Northern Ireland’s first minister is a historic moment that breathes new life into the republican slogan “tiocfaidh ár lá” – “our day will come”. The Sinn Féin deputy leader, a working-class republican, has taken charge of a state that was designed in 1921 to enshrine a unionist majority in perpetuity, and that the IRA vowed to destroy. Even in 1998, when the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles, it seemed inconceivable that the IRA’s political wing, the fourth-biggest party, would one day claim the top post at the Stormont executive.
But the Democratic Unionist party’s decision to drop a boycott of power sharing in return for an easing of post-Brexit trade arrangements means that O’Neill, 47, has belatedly become first minister in accordance with the 2022 assembly election, when Sinn Féin pipped the DUP as the biggest party. The former deputy first minister – a post with equal power but less prestige that the DUP will now occupy – has been sworn in amid the marbled grandeur of an edifice once regarded as a Protestant assembly for a Protestant people. It could appear that nationalism’s day has finally come. Sinn Féin’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, this week spoke of a “historical turning of the wheel” and said Irish unity was “within touching distance”. Except it’s not. Political and demographic winds blow favourably but the republican dream remains distant. The party’s breakthrough at Stormont has symbolic and psychological force but does not signify a looming united Ireland. Paradoxically, O’Neill’s ascent could cement Northern Ireland’s position in the UK by restoring stability and confidence in the status quo. The region divides roughly into three camps: 40% nationalist, 40% unionist and 20% non-aligned who tend to favour staying in the UK. Some change is under way. In local elections last year, first-preference votes for pro-unification parties for the first time outnumbered those who backed pro-union parties and candidates. But a recent Irish Times opinion poll found that 30% would vote for unification in a referendum versus 51% that would vote against, with the rest undecided or inclined to abstain. Other polls have consistently shown a clear majority favour remaining in the UK, albeit with fluctuating margins. This has endured despite Catholics now outnumbering Protestants; despite Brexit, which most people opposed; despite crumbling public services; and despite the Republic of Ireland becoming wealthy, secular and pluralist. Sinn Féin has advanced not by attracting centrist voters but by cannibalising its nationalist rival, the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP). The nationalist bloc is largely static and coalescing around one party while the unionist bloc is shrinking and more split, denting unionist parties but not necessarily their cause – a dynamic seen in Scotland. “I don’t think there ever will be a unionist first minister in Northern Ireland again. It’s over,” said Jon Tonge, a University of Liverpool politics professor and authority on unionism. “It’s not that the union is over but the unionist state is over.” Tonge notes that O’Neill shuns the name Northern Ireland in favour of the “north of Ireland”, a jab at partition. “It’s astonishing that Sinn Féin can ascend to such electoral heights while still refusing to recognise Northern Ireland as a political entity.” The republican party will continue to lobby for a referendum, which only a secretary of state can call, and project a sense of inevitability about unification. But to sustain support – and to show voters in the Irish republic it can be trusted with power – it must focus on improving Northern Ireland’s economy, public services and infrastructure. To show, in other words, that the state it wants to abolish works.