How can we integrate Unionism into a possible United Ireland?

If Scotland become fully independent I think it will be not too long after that they rejoin the EU. As for defense sharing as the EU looks at having some form of combined defence policy/force I would be in favour of us ending our neutrality in that regard and being part of that. Our future lies as a part of the EU so IMHO that would make sense.

I would actually agree that if a UI (as envisaged by many on here) ever happened, 50 years would dramatically decrease the sense of Britishness. But that type of UI has not a snowball in hells chance of happening.

I don’t believe the people of NI will in the foreseeable future vote to leave the Uk, but if they did it would result in anything but the 26 counties becoming 32. There would be devolution for ni in a UI just as there is in the Uk. There is no way the majority of southerners would have the stomach for the challenges of trying to rule 32 counties.

I couldn’t even guess how many unionists would leave before knowing what the UI would look like.

I think the likely outcome will be a United Ireland eventually. But it will be over a very long time. Nobody will feel like a winner and nobody a loser as it will take so long. There isn’t a hope in hell of a republican waking up in 10 or 20 years time in a 32 county republic ruled from Dublin. I can see Scotland leaving and the UK changing. NI will become further detached from the UK and step by step be incorporated into Ireland. I think joe Brolly is right in what he said recently that it will be like a two state solution initially, backed by money from America and the EU as the population is so small it wouldn’t cost them much.

Most young people in NI aren’t as negative about the other side as their parents and grand parents were. I think there will be much more mixing and inter marriage in the future and who knows where that will lead. That along with more immigration and less religion in peoples lives.

Agreed, although many posters on here seem to be in denial and think the Protestants in the North will be as staunchly Unionist as ever 50 years after a United Ireland, despite the Union ceasing to exist.

It didn’t take you long to personalise things. I personally don’t follow the independent Scotland polls or Scottish politics. I am simply reporting what a Scottish family told me. They listed a number of snp scandals and also said that for the first time in years there were relatively impressive leaders of the other parties in Scotland.

I will have a look at the polls but this is off topic.

thanks for the welcome. I see not much has changed

edit. I had a wee look. These polls are hard to follow but this one a few weeks earlier suggests that Scotland won’t be going anywhere. I couldn’t find any since snp recent disasters https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,nicola-sturgeon-popularity-ratings-drop-by-nearly-40-points-with-scottish-voters

And we are to believe they have casually ignored the many many scandals in the Tory party? They seem a bit selective this family of friends you have. 😁

You are spinning this into something or is not. Are you suggesting my Scottish friends are not even allowed an opinion. They were referring exclusively to the main parties in Scotland and their Scottish leadership. We didn’t even discuss Boris. I wasn’t aware of the snp proposing cutting the bottoms of every school classroom door in Scotland, until they told me. It certainly give us a laugh over our beers

If that helps you deal with the current conundrum republicans face ie they anticipated ni would last for 5 years, and 100 years later it is alive and well and southern interest in uniting is in continual decline.

I an going back on topic to discuss the impact on Britishness following any hypothetical UI.

That’s even more sad for you. That your fellow Irish choose to live in a ‘pathetic failed statelet that has not at any point been a success for it's people’, rather than take up the option the gfa presents to them to live in the promised land.

it’s not unionists anymore who are blocking a UI utopia, it’s northerners who were born into the nationalist community. Thank god they have seen the light just in time.

The North has never been a functioning region, never mind country, so in that sense it has always been a failure. The idea that the north would be maintained as some sort of freakish pickle-jar preservation of unionism's failed project in a UI is laughable.

Your challenge Tom is to convince those brought up in nationalist homes of that analysis. That’s all you need. Unionists are not your blockage anymore. Unfortunately for you it’s headed the wrong direction.

In reality I think we are a fair bit off from a UI. But we could be entering a period of north/south cooperation on steroids, given a soon to be SF first minister.

I have actually gone off the idea of a United Ireland via making concessions to the Unionists. Either a majority wants to join the Republic or they don't, it shouldn't be a negotiation imo.

Any concessions to the Unionists would be voluntary by us as a gesture to them. No such concessions have to be made.

Northern Ireland in all probability would be a great investment for the Republic according to numerous studies including a study by some of the greatest experts from around the world with previous experience on similar studies of German and Korean Unification.

Brexit has also shown that the Irish people North and South have next to no say in what happens to the Irish border, the Tory government is still making some of the decisions on what's best for us, issues like this have been arising and will continue to arise so long as Ireland is still partitioned.

Commenting on the study, Marcus Noland, Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, provided comment on the study, writing: "Modeling Irish Unification is an important, timely examination of the economics of Irish unification, applying state-of-the-art modeling techniques to the issue at hand. The modeling work illustrates a variety of channels which are likely to be at play in the Irish case, and concludes that Irish unification would be economically beneficial to both parts of the island".