Ben Lowry: Unionists should be prepared for the coming trap of civil assemblies about Northern Ireland's future

(Click here to read Ben Lowry on July and how he loves being in NI in it and click here to read him on the 50th anniversary of the invasion of Cyprus)​

Ms Gray, who has links to Northern Ireland, had long been a highly influential government official in London (and briefly in Belfast too) before she controversially became Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

She took up that post when he was opposition Labour Party leader, and retains it now that he is prime minister.

Ms Gray seems to have annoyed other people in the new government by trying to dominate the thinking about the planned GAA stadium for west Belfast, and seeking an early announcement on funding for it – or so it was reported in The Times

We followed this story up on our front page (click here to read it), and sought comment from her and other branches of government. She has yet to respond.

The Times report quoted a Stormont source as saying Ms Gray was “very close” to Conor Murphy, the Sinn Fein minister who holds the hugely influential economy portfolio.

If such funding had been suddenly announced, of a massive subsidy for a stadium that is now projected to cost more than £300 million, it would have been a remarkable move when there are so many other demands on taxpayers, including Harland and Wolff, the health service and education.

But there was something else that Ms Gray has been pushing that is potentially of much longer-lasting significance to Northern Ireland: citizens’ assemblies.

Such assemblies take different forms in different place but they are, in essence, an attempt to get the public more involved in decision making. A group or ‘jury’ of citizens look at an issue, hear from witnesses, and weigh up evidence that is then put into a report. Politicians might well then act on the recommendations.

Critics of the legalisation of abortion and same-sex marriage believe that citizens’ assemblies in the Republic were used to get support for such fraught issues – which, if left to politicians, might not have happened.

While Ms Gray’s position on Casement has not yet been confirmed, her position on assemblies is better known, because this year it emerged that she supported them. It was an idea that did not go down well with everyone in the Labour Party where many people think that elected politicians must decide government policy, not farm them out to such other forums.

I feel confident that if there was another citizens’ assembly in the Republic on a ‘New’ Ireland, it would come out in favour. A growing number of mainstream Dublin politicians are calling for preparations for constitutional change. And who has been banging on about the need for such an assembly to examine an all Ireland? Sinn Fein of course.

Ms Gray has cited the impact of citizens’ assemblies in the Republic of Ireland, and thinks them “transformational”. She seems to want them on a range of issues, including devolution. It seems hard to believe that someone so informed on politics on these island is unaware that Irish republicans are devoted to the idea of such assemblies. Again, we would be happy to give her space in this newspaper to explain her thinking on that.

Meanwhile, here is my advice to unionists: Get ready for the push for such assemblies, resist them as much as you can politically, and then if they are imposed on us ignore them so that they cannot claim cross-community legitimacy.

Consider for example the Irish Parliaments’ Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. It is a grand-sounding body that has become in essence an official reflection of nationalist Ireland’s push for constitutional change, first by removing minority Stormont protections now unionists are in the minority, and then for wider change. Be clear that this will mean overt, but more likely subtle, attacks on the principle of consent.

A citizens’ assembly in the Republic on an all Ireland will certainly find in favour, leading to a fresh push for NI to leave the UK. When that assembly comes, it will be craving unionist approval for its republican agenda. Thus the actor Jimmy Nesbitt, the evangelical Wallace Thompson, the former loyalist Davy Adams and others will be wooed and flattered as honoured expert witnesses.

The current Labour Party leadership of Sir Keir and, in NI, Hilary Benn is unlikely to be so foolish as to grant a UK version of such an outrageous and provocative assembly to decide over NI. But one day someone else will be in charge of the Northern Ireland Office, and they might be well disposed to the idea.

Get ready to help expose it as the vehicle to fracture the UK that it most assuredly will be.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor