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Excellent post there from stibhan.

On the question of why Sinn Féin are looking this border poll when there seems no hope in hell of winning it, I wonder if there is some strategic thinking behind it. The City Hall flag issue brought (a minority) of working-class loyalists into conflict with the state on an issue which didn't seem rationally to merit the anger. SF might be imagining that a border poll might provoke an even bigger reaction from these elements and throw Unionism into serious disarray when so many of the tectonic plates of the Union and EU are moving so unpredictably. But hopefully, some serious discussion of the realistic merits of new and radical solutions would get a better airing than on the Nolan show fail.

Serious dark age stuff in the treatment of Marion Price.

Scum comes in all colours. PC Britian needs to forget about not offending certain comunities and get heavey handed now. Let the army at them. There is no pretty outcome to this now so it is a matter of putting it to a stop immidiately. The county can not afford to have this for a week. If a few of these bits of sh1t happen to get a bullet then so be it. 

Yeah, that worked in Derry in 1972 after all. No-one cared that some in the crowd 'happened to get a bullet'.

Here we go

How do you compare a peacefull march in Derry with what is happening in England.

Well, the security forces were concerned to reclaim the streets and round up the 'young hooligans' in 1972 so there is that, but my point is more that, whatever the situation, the 'Bloody Sunday' approach (err on the side of slaughter) is not likely to be anything other than counterproductive. You were using exactly the sort of language Tories and Unionists were using in the early 70s and beyond.

Scum comes in all colours. PC Britian needs to forget about not offending certain comunities and get heavey handed now. Let the army at them. There is no pretty outcome to this now so it is a matter of putting it to a stop immidiately. The county can not afford to have this for a week. If a few of these bits of sh1t happen to get a bullet then so be it. 

Yeah, that worked in Derry in 1972 after all. No-one cared that some in the crowd 'happened to get a bullet'. 

The majority have been the blacks from videos and pictures i have seen.

The looters are from a mixture of different racial backgrounds, whoever is in the majority. For that reason it wouldn't make much sense to say much about their racial background in explaining the looting as it wouldn't help to explain why so many who come from other racial backgrounds are looting as well. What they all have in common is that they come from the poorest boroughs in London, and some of the poorest in the entire UK. Surely that has some bearing on any explanation.

Haven't heard race mentioned much by the news stations or media, just "youths" or "inner city youths". Are we not allowed to say it?

Say what? Black people are genetically disposed to robbing? Outside of Tottenham, where genuine anger with the police kicked off the events of Saturday night, the looters have been a mixture of white, Asian, mixed race and so on. Look at the footage, including the youtube video above.

Well, I always understood pikey to be an Irish equivalent of chav, meaning both travellers and the working classes, but there we are, it seems to specifically mean people who burn bins in Dublin when an English queen visits. That's that sorted.

But what's this? The 'type' of person who burns Dublin bins? What else marks out this 'type'? They can't spell or understand political concepts very well, apparently. That would mean bryan ferry's son or that pink Floyd guitarist's son who behaved similarly on political protests wouldn't be pikeys or chav as they are well-educated. Well that's clear.

What's your position on having literacy tests to keep this 'type' away from the ballot box? It kept ol' Dixie well run for many a decade.

Racist? How? Snobbish? How?

Seriously? I'd love to know this definition of pikey you're using.

The Connolly comment was a sarcastic dig at your claiming of superior understanding of republicanism given your apparently daily mail Tory view of the world.

Questions:

How are Catholics marginalised in Northern Ireland of today?
How would this be addressed by a United Ireland?
How would a united ireland guard against marginalising Northern Protestants?

I'm not making a moral argument that a united Ireland would be some sort of utopia, just that circumstances can easily change to make it more realistic than many today seem to imagine.

BTW, I don't mean to say that Catholics are marginalised in NI today (though I would argue that many of all denominations have been left behind in the current arrangement), more that all of the people of NI have a marginal role as citizens in the UK. Seriously, what leverage do NI politicians have with Whitehall in the amount of money that is pumped across the water, particularly as the troubles recede from people's memories? The rows that will kick off over the Barnett formula as English taxpayers start complaining about funding the Scots/Welsh/NIish will, IMHO, make it more likely that these decisions will take place outside of the influence of all the citizens in NI.

To my mind, it would be obvious that Northern Protestants would have more influence in a United Ireland, simply as a reflection of the arithmetic. Whether that's a good reason for favouring a UI is another question, of course; we would all have most influence in an independent NI, yet I don't favour that personally. 

Ehhhhh?/quote]

Badly worded perhaps, but I meant the overall public package which people in NI have access to - the NHS, pensions etc. Anecdotally, I have heard many who describe themselves as nationalists gives this as a reason for being content with things as they stand. There is also the consideration that, even before the crash in the South, there would likely have been reform of welfare provision for Northerners - many Celtic Tiger blowhards were citing NI's dependence on the public sector and welfare as a reason why they wouldn't risk their affluence by integrating such a stale and sluggish economy into their own vibrant creation. How times have changed etc etc... 

Unless you're a pikey f**k in Dublin with nothing better to do than pretend to be a Republican when you can barely spell the word, never mind understand it.

Racist and snobbish. The spirit of Connolly is alive and well...

I can never understand it when relatively young people confidently predict that there will not be a united Ireland in their lifetime. If we can learn anything from history, it is that the medium- to long-term future is completely unpredictable. I mean, one of the most sure-fire things that we can expect from the future (as they seem largely beyond human control now) is that there will be massively disruptive climate change, reduction in biodiversity, population imbalances and economic chaos. Yet because of a scrap of paper that no-one loves from 1998, it is inconceivable for some people that there will be any changes in the constitutional relationships in these islands...

I'll mention two tendencies that I think will have serious implications the relationship between north and south on the island

1. Many have cited the poll which apparently has many (a majority?) of Catholics favouring the Union at the moment. For this to make sense many of these 'unionists' must be SF voters. Now I don't think that this is completely illogical. They may favour a Northern Ireland where, to put it bluntly, Catholics have a well-protected social, economic and cultural status, but also where a) the British exchequer funds a more generous welfare system and widespread public sector employment with generous pensions and perks and b) gives Southerners time to sort out their economic problems to make a united Ireland in the longer term more practicable and attractive. The economic hit taken by the south seems for many to mark the final nail in the coffin for a united Ireland. However, the implications for the North of the UK's economic woes has not wound itself out yet. Catholics may be happy enough with a marginal role in that state so long as the money keeps flowing, but I would suggest such loyalty is of the fairweather variety. If Northern Catholics are to be dirt poor, I would imagine they would rather be dirt poor in an all-Ireland state where they have a more central role as citizens. The demographic question, or the sectarian headcount, becomes central once more.

2. Related to the above, and with serious implications for the attachment of Northern Protestants to the Union, we don't know what's going to happen with Scotland. There isn't an immediate prospect of them leaving the Union, but surely it is not inconceivable in the medium- to long-term, particularly given the convulsions we are living through. The GFA ties Northern Ireland into a carefully balanced series of relationships across the two islands and within the EU, but i would imagine that, regardless of what happens in NI, all of these will come under serious strain in the coming years.

I'm not suggesting that because of these reasons a united Ireland is 'obvious and inevitable' as Gerry Adams once said. But surely it can't be written off so casually given the radical changes that lie in store for us all.

There is no evidence of tactical voting, for/against Alliance or any other party, by Nationalists that I can see.

As I said above, the Belfast East result suggests that more Catholics voted Alliance than voted for Irish nationalist parties; the latter's combined share almost halved while the turnout went up from c.30,000 to c.34,000. Would you not say that a disproportionate amount of Long's votes came from Catholics? Does that not count as tactical voting?

There may be something in what you say, but if there are significant numbers of Unionist voters who are disenchanted with the "baggage" of the mainstram Unionist parties etc, why wouldn't they either reform those parties from within, or switch instead to a more moderate Unionist party?

If you're a Guardian-reading, Iraq-war opposing, liberal, cosmopolitan, professional from a Protestant background (but now atheist or agnostic), which of the Unionist parties are you going to vote for? There may be more of them, but the most 'moderate' aligned itself with the Tories. You might stick around to try and transform the party, but that ambition is pretty hopeless in Northern Ireland and, let's face it, in our more consumerist age where people are less likely to want to knock on doors etc, we would all likely just switch to a party which offers us a better 'product'. That kind of person might feel guilty about feeling comfortable with the Union, what with the horrors of the first Stormont era and if they can vote for a party which can say it is genuinely non-sectarian and has no connection with Paisley, John Taylor et al, then they don't feel so bad when they are meeting up with their old college friends across the water.

If you are all of the above but from a Catholic background, you will have absolutely no problem voting for the SDLP; that is if you are on the continuum between being mildly enthusiastic about a United Ireland to indifferent or even attached to the present form of the Union, you can vote for them as a good liberal-lefty type without having to face any hard questions about the Kingsmill massacre and the like. There is absolutely no value added, as there certainly is for your Unionist counterpart, in switching to the Alliance party (unless you are voting tactically).

Yet Nationalist voters have clearly moved away from the SDLP, it's just that it has been towards SF rather than Alliance

I didn't say that there was no reason for voters to move from the SDLP, but rather that there was no reason for voters to move specifically towards Alliance. If we think of the SDLP as historically a kind of coalition between potential SF supporters and potential Alliance supporters, it is obvious why the first group have moved (ceasefire; strong on Irish unity), which makes it even less likely that the second group will move. Seriously, what reason would an SDLP voter have to move towards the Alliance party, other than in lending a tactical vote?

The more I think about it, the more I think that the OP is committing a fallacy of composition - that (relatively) high vote-share in majority Unionist (read Protestant) constituencies means that Unionists are the only ones in fact voting for the Alliance party in those constituencies. Surely the minority status of Catholics would give them a greater incentive to vote for the 'least-Unionist' Unionist party in FPTP elections?

I would suggest for example in Naomi Long's triumph in East Belfast, more Catholics voted for Alliance than for the nationalist parties and that a disproportionate amount of the Alliance vote, given the demographics of the constituency, was drawn from Catholic voters. Also witness the switch when it moved from FPTP to STV in the Assembly elections (I'm sure you can look all this up on wikipedia, BBC or whatever if you're interested).

Also, wouldn't higher Alliance-vote share in majority unionist constituencies suggest tactical voting by Catholic/nationalists?

Another way you could interpret this is that the Alliance party have failed in their objective of moving past the unionist/nationalist binary to reach out to both sides of the community, and the accusation that they are unionist-lite has some substance. I see no evidence of how the Alliance party has done anything to progress towards a developing an all-Ireland dimension to their political perspective in a way which would demonstrate they are 'post-unionist'. In that sense they remain stuck in the past.

Another important factor is that they act as a kind of spiritual salve to a certain type of liberal unionist. The other Unionist parties have sectarian baggage and/or open associations with the Conservative party in a way many find uncomfortable. I don't see any equivalent push factor driving Catholic voters away from the SDLP, which has its liberal-left ducks in a row as well as their notorious attempt to develop a post-nationalist perspective.