Cost of a United Ireland and the GFA

I'll even save you the time, here's ChatGPT explaining why you're missing the point itself;

Based, I freely admit, on no data whatsoever my, um, instinct is that "Northern Irish" is, in part, an identity born out of a rejection of the binary British/Irish, Nationalist/Unionist, Protestant/Catholic duality that has so bedevilled the politics of NI. To some extent, those who identify as "Northern Irish" are telling you what they are not, rather than what they are. They reject any identity, and by extension any politics, that is defined in opposition to another group.

If and to the extent that I'm right about that, you'd expect NI-identifying people to be all over the shop as to how they would vote in a border poll — some would vote for the union, others for reunification with Ireland, still others would be "don't know" (meaning not, I have no opinion, but rather, I'll make a decision about that when it becomes a real-world question). One of the reasons I asked if we had any data on their voting preferences was to test my hypothesis.

I did find this paper produced for the NI Assembly in 2014-15 which has some interesting data on whether NI-identifying people see themselves as unionist, nationalist or neither; on their preference for direct rule, rule by the Assembly and reunification, etc. But it's 8 years old, and it predates the whole Brexit saga, which I suspect will have had something of a radicalising effect on the NI identity and on the positions NI-identifying people tend to adopt, so at this point I wouldn't take it as necessarily saying anything very reliable about NI-identifying people today.

[On edit: The paper I refer to above is the same one that Francie links to in post 1649.]

[Downcow: Friendly advice: do not use ChatGPT for anything that matters; in particular for your work. Its algorithm tends not so much to produce reliable material as to produce material presented in a way that suggests reliability. We perhaps shouldn't be surprised at this; it learns by digesting vast amounts of material posted to the internet and this focus on presentation characterises much of that material.

Sometime this focus on seeming reliable leads ChatGPT to imply that it has found more relevant data than in fact it has. (Example; in your post 1642 above Chat GPT lists three data points; two of them are in fact the same data point — an Irish Times/ARINS poll conducted in December 2022, as you will discover if you follow through the citations provided. But Chat GPT likes lists, and doesn't like lists of less than three items so, hey, here you go; three data points.)

Other times, Chat GPT will simply invent data and, if necessary, will invent citations to make its presentation of the data look more authoritative. If you then ask it to follow through and provide the cited sources, it will invent material and show you that rather than confess that the citations were bogus.

There are lawyers facing disciplinary proceedings in New York State right now for filing court documents citing "cases" that ChatGPT "found" for them that turned out not to exist.

Tldr: ChatGPT is clever, but not honest. Much like the internet, in fact.]

I completely agree on much of what you say about chatgpt, but I do think you and fionn may have thrown the baby out with the bath water.

I use chatgpt 4 with various plugins to wonderful effect in my work and personally.

when I write an email or letter (I use dictation software) I just ask it to rewrite it and maybe ask it to be formal, friendly, etc. 100% brilliant instant output every time.

If I want it to help me with marketing, pr, etc. I tell it the task and then tell it to ask me anything it needs to know from me to carry out the task effectively. It will ask me a series of questions, I answer, and bingo.

policies, risk assessments, etc. brilliant. Of course I will read them and tweak them, but it turns a 2 hour job into a 10 minute job.

etc etc etc

now I don’t want to patronise you guys, but it really is about engaging with it and learning how to ask it for help. I wouldn’t be without it.

but back on topic

Peregrinus I guess you may be correct that northern Irish is inclusive of lots of different positions. That in itself is a great positive and not unusual, maybe it’s an identity coming of age.

I guess Irish in the roi context contains a broad church of political opinions - it would be strange if it didn’t.

personally, to me, Northern Irish is not a rejection of anything. I have had a very strong northern Irish identity since I was a teenager. Maybe it’s out of being rejected rather than rejecting. I always felt we were a place apart. During the troubles, in a strange way it made you proud to come from ni and made our wee place exciting and different (that may sound warped but hey who’s not warped). The AIA in 1985 hurt as a British unionist. ‘Remember remember the 15th of November’. This had a huge impression on me. My northern irishness was massively emphasised and I became clearly NI first. The ulster flag replaced the union flag as my number one symbol, etc, etc. I’ve mellowed and that’s evolved. My northern irishness is now much more about a love for OWC and a desire that all our people can build this place together.

but rather than my northern irishness being an avoidance of other identities, I would guess my northern irishness is stronger, more pronounced, and a stronger sense of belonging than most Irish and English, etc

just my loved experience

Correct, the fact that it is not a homogenous voting bloc is another indicator that those of a Northern Irish persuasion are a clear sign of normalisation in that society.

However, I think you also need to distinguish between their political party voting intentions and their constitutional intentions. In relation to the latter, what you can expect is that the identification with Northern Ireland will need to be incorporated into any constitutional change that they might vote for. They will want the Northern Irish identity protected in any future overarching constitutional solution, even if they are voting DUP or Sinn Fein, though it should be noted that both of those parties do far worse within that identity than they do within their own sectarian community. The Alliance Party gets greater support from the Northern Irish identity than it does from elsewhere, so maybe that is where to look.

For what it's worth:

First, notable about the NI identity is that it's not - as you might at first expect - matched with a political opinion which favours NI independence. (Advocacy of NI independence has always been a pretty fringe position, but rightly or wrongly I associate it with loyalists who have grown to distrust the British government, and who think that an independent NI could be more British than the British themselves. Thus, it's largely a political position adopted by people who consider themselves unionists/British.)

What NI identity does seem to be linked to, at least in the 2015 paper, is greater support for devolution. Invited to express a preference between direct rule from Westminster, rule by the Assembly, or a united Ireland:

• 75% of Protestants who identify as NI preferred the Assembly (Protestants who identify as British: 60%)
• 70% of Catholics who identify as NI preferred the Assembly (Catholics who identify as Irish: 36%)

My suggested explanation for this is that the alternatives of direct rule and united Ireland were seen as polarised, while rule by the Assembly institutionally reflects and involves both communities, so it had a particular attraction for NI-identifying people. This would tie in with my belief that the NI identity is based on a reject of polarisation.

Similarly, when invited to identify as unionist, nationalist or neither:

• 47% of Protestants who identify as NI said they were neither unionist nor nationalist (Protestants who identify as British: 31%)
• 64% of Catholics who identify as said they were neither unionist nor nationalist (Catholic who identified as Irish: 30%)

Right now we've got less devolution within the UK than in 2015 because of the antics of the DUP. If your take is correct then, not for the first time, the DUP are doing the nationalists' work for them.

When Ireland is united, grateful republicans will raise a monument to the men and women of the DUP who worked so tirelessly to bring it about.

You need to look back at @Peregrinus post. He clearly identified "greater support for devolution" as being linked with the Northern Irish identity.

My post builds on that.

That only rings true in a federal solution.

However, I do think that there is significant first mover advantage in either mainstream republicanism or unionism proposing new greater devolution arrangements. For someone like the Alliance Party to propose stronger East-West and North-South relations balanced by changes to the D'Hondt set-up, placing itself as the watchdog to ensure that neither of the two mainstream sectarian parties run away with themselves would be a bold but possible rewarding step.

no, it puts responsibility on the policing force to be a more acceptable force. Dont even comment on the PSNI - you have very little experience of them

And where does it say that is linked to their position on the constitutional issue?

Under the current arrangement they favour more devolution, that is all you can extrapolate from that. I think all identities would currently.

Can't remember which poll exactly but one did report that support for a UI is only at 75% among catholics while among protestants support for the union is in the 90% range.

The difference given the approx equal size of the cohorts suggests the NI identity is more of a concern for pro unity parties.

Only speculation but similar assumptions being used by the likes of O'Leary recently with his 2031 claim. All catholics teenagers will vote unity once 18 etc.

Only direct measures are the LucidTalk et al polls where people are asked would they vote for it tomorrow. If any of these assumptions are true then we'll see a trend in that direction.

Same view here.

What we should be talking about is the Plan For a UI and how close to that we are.

That will be the gamechanger IMO.

Also maybe at the next elections, SF should follow the lead of the SNP and claim them as de facto border polls? Force the issue so to speak if they truly believe the support is there.

Seems a better option that the current one of ignoring unity to hoover up the SDLP and NI identity vote. Not sure how that helps at all.

It is no more of a direct measure than the also flawed, choose-your-own-adventure 'would you vote for Unification', or the very loaded, 'would you vote for a non-specific higher amount of tax'.

They're all equally flawed, that's the nature of the beast and why opinion polls should all be taken with a pinch of salt......and a particularly large bucket of salt when they're massive statistical outliers from the usual.

You know, the ones that one side or the other will always pull out when trying to make a point while ignoring the rest!