Owen Polley: The key unionist split is between the UK version and little Ulster one

I wanted Northern Ireland to become more involved in mainstream British politics, including accepting social reforms that were taken for granted in the rest of the UK, and I wasn’t particularly interested in the cultural trappings of Ulster unionism.

Often, my way of thinking was labelled civic or liberal unionism and I had no problem with that.

Things have changed a lot since then.

For a start, social liberalism has come to mean something different. While, even a short time ago, a social liberal might have advocated an unbossy attitude to people’s lives, believing their lifestyles and moral decisions were up to them, now he or she is likely to have a much more authoritarian outlook.

Today, liberalism is usually taken to mean accepting that gender is merely an identity that can be changed at a whim, or that statues of historical figures should be torn down to atone for ‘colonialism’, or that men and boys must be educated about their ‘toxic masculinity’, or that all white people share ‘privilege’ over other races and must apologise.

In short, whether or not it’s fair, the word has become associated with everything that’s worst and stupidest about modern politics.

These silly, damaging ideas may have come to NI late, partly because we were preoccupied with our own, traditional arguments about identity, but they’ve been adopted with zeal by politicians who want to appear progressive. As a result, we have an unenviable political scene, and a choice between parties that preside over a sectarian carve-up, or parties that adopt the most facile trends from the wider world of politics.

Unionists used to see themselves as ‘liberal’ if they were a bit more open-minded than their traditional counterparts, but now anybody with a modicum of common sense would be wary of the word.

I don’t think that’s exactly what Ben Lowry was driving at in his column on Saturday December 12 when he said that Northern Ireland needs firm rather than liberal unionism, but it is part of the picture.

(The article can be read here: ‘This is a time for firm, not liberal, unionism in Northern Ireland’).

Just like Ben, I used to believe that Northern Ireland needed a party that was pragmatic on social issues, but firm on the constitution.

The problem was that, too often, a more open-minded approach to society seems to exist alongside a willingness to consider concessions that would weaken the Union.

That tendency might spring from an admirable and understandable desire to accommodate nationalists’ aspirations within NI, and to build an ‘inclusive’ home, but it can veer into naivety. Ben provides some great examples of liberal unionism, “falling into confusion on points of principle.”

Often, these involve basic building blocks of Northern Ireland’s Britishness, like our place in the UK’s internal market, or the full application of British citizenship law here, or the three strands of the Belfast Agreement that ensure we avoid joint authority.

Where Brexit and the Irish Sea border are concerned, there is a lot of blame to go around.

The DUP is certainly culpable, having pushed for a harder deal that required more definite frontiers and accepted a regulatory divide between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Remember, though, that many ‘remainers’ here were prepared to allow Northern Ireland to be used to push for a softer Brexit, rather than emphasising that we must always be treated in the same way as the rest of the UK.

And remember that some unionists were so upset by the referendum result that they did little to discourage the idea that Northern Ireland’s absorption by the Republic was a realistic or enticing prospect because Britain had decided to leave the EU.

From a unionist perspective, leave or remain, two principles should have been unnegotiable from the moment an EU referendum was mentioned.

First, that the people of NI had a right to take part in that poll on the same basis as voters in the rest of UK.

And, second that the result had to apply here on the same basis as the rest of the UK. Anything that deviated from that framework was an acceptance that we are second class British citizens, who don’t enjoy the same political rights as our compatriots on the mainland.

The problem with unionism, as I see it, is that some unionists are focused on playing as full a role as possible in the UK, while others, perhaps a majority, like the trappings of Britishness, but are comfortable seeing NI as a ‘place apart’.

This is an attitude that cuts across the liberal-conservative divide on social issues and it makes it easier for the Westminster government to cut us loose on issues like Brexit.

It is either intent upon defending the interests of unionism as a religious or ethnic group, rather than seeing it primarily as a political philosophy based on allegiance to the UK; or it’s happy with arrangements that fudge the constitutional issue and cast Northern Ireland as a kind of bridge between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

I agree with a lot of what Ben said, but I believe that the key divide is not between liberal and conservative unionism, but between UK-focused unionism and its insular, little-Ulster cousin.

It’s a split that cuts across the unionist parties, and we do need to maintain a broad coalition of unionists to fight any border poll. But unionism that does not put the UK front and centre will always be a weak spot when it comes to NI’s place in the Union.

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