Micheál Martin addressed the Alliance Party conference in Belfast last Friday. It was an official engagement: he was billed as the Tánaiste and the speech was issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs. This was remarkable enough in itself and the content was more remarkable still. Half the content was a call for Stormont reform, going into specifics and leaving no doubt Martin agrees with Alliance’s position.
The significance of this was overshadowed by an academic survey, also delivered at the conference, which found a plurality of Alliance members would consider a united Ireland. However, that was hardly unrelated to the Tánaiste turning up, by invitation, on Northern Ireland’s middle ground. The other half of his speech focused on the Shared Island initiative.
Most of the headlines Martin’s appearance generated were due to criticism from Derek Mooney, a former Fianna Fáil adviser. He accused the Tánaiste of “political two-timing” for speaking to Alliance when his party had a partnership with the SDLP. Mooney also criticised Martin for failing to take the opportunity to advocate for a united Ireland.
Such advocacy can come in many forms, of course. The Tánaiste was unlikely to deliver a tub-thumping republican speech that would have put his Alliance hosts on the spot. Nor can you two-time someone after you have been dumped. The SDLP ended its hapless three-year partnership with Fianna Fáil in 2022, without informing Martin in advance.
Before that, the SDLP had itself been two-timing Fianna Fáil. When Labour’s Eamon Gilmore was tánaiste a decade ago he made attendance at SDLP conferences an annual event. This is another reason why Martin’s address to Alliance gives the impression of Dublin’s political establishment moving on. Arguably, Fine Gael made the move first. In 2019, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar spoke to an Alliance “pre-conference dinner”, although he stressed this was part of an engagement with all Stormont parties. Fine Gael and Alliance have long been comfortable in each other’s company but this appears a less natural pairing as Alliance undergoes a generational shift to the left.
The detail Martin went into on Stormont reform elevated his speech beyond the usual cross-Border and inter-party platitudes. He called for an end to the ability of large parties to collapse Stormont and block Executive decisions, a reset of the Assembly’s petition of concern veto mechanism, the replacement of cross-community voting with weighted majority voting, reversal of the St Andrews Agreement changes on appointing first and deputy first ministers, and renaming both posts the joint first ministers as that is “what they are”.
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Martin noted any reform process must involve all parties and both Governments, while pointedly observing the Belfast Agreement provides for such a process. He framed all this in terms of a growing centre ground, requiring modernisation of the agreement’s binary unionist and nationalist assumptions.
In reality, growth seems to have peaked at about 15 per cent, well short of the 20 per cent often mentioned when the centre ground is discussed. The near-death of the Northern Ireland Greens, following an ill-advised 2019 electoral pact, has effectively reduced the unaligned bloc to Alliance alone. This is bound to have a stultifying effect.
Yet Alliance is still larger than the SDLP, with 50 per cent more voters and more than twice as many Assembly seats. It appears secure enough as the North’s third party and the Tánaiste appeared to be endorsing this new role. After several years of vacillating over Stormont reform, the SDLP has embraced the issue and is trying to take a lead on it, where previously Alliance had the field to itself.
The SDLP’s decline has forced it into Opposition. It devoted its first “opposition day” in the Assembly on Monday to challenging Sinn Féin and the DUP on reform. For Martin to have acknowledged Alliance’s ownership of the issue three days before was unfortunate timing, even if coincidental.
Some nationalist critics of the Shared Ireland Initiative see it as the opposite of a united Ireland initiative. They might see engaging with Alliance in the same light, especially if it seems to be at the SDLP’s expense. Stormont reform is about stabilising Northern Ireland, which could be interpreted as trying to save the status quo.
But if island-sharing is a long game on unification, as many unionists suspect, engaging with Alliance is precisely what nationalists should do. Naomi Long’s party has the casting vote in Northern Ireland: its members will decide if a Border poll is held and its supporters will decide the outcome. They are unlikely to be impressed by the belligerence of Monday’s report from the Ireland’s Future campaign, with its downplaying of reconciliation and disturbingly post-agreement demand for a Border poll compelled by international pressure. Martin’s approach makes more sense. Why preach to the choir when you have been invited to address a wavering congregation?