Corbyn's rhetoric on Northern Ireland is milder than expected

Jeremy Corbyn got a rapturous reception from the crowd at Queen's University yesterday, many of whom were students.
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As trailed in advance, he called for the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference (BIIC) to be convened in the absence of devolution.

The audience in the Whitla Hall included a number of veteran Sinn Fein politicians such as Francie Molloy, which is hardly surprising given Mr Corbyn’s long association with republicans. But while Mr Corbyn’s comments on BIIC, echoing a nationalist demand, were no surprise, as this column observed yesterday, on the whole his message yesterday was surprisingly restrained.

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Our follow-on interview with Mr Corbyn shows that he does not seem to be calling for joint London-Dublin stewardship of Northern Ireland via the BIIC. His shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd pointed out that is not possible constitutionally. Mr Corbyn also did not declare his hand on Irish unity in the event of a border poll.

These statements are significant, given his past enthusiasm for unity. It might be that Mr Corbyn is being cautious now that Downing Street is in his sights, following last year’s narrow general election result. It might also be that moderate elements in his shadow cabinet are having some success in controlling his rhetoric.

It is also interesting to see how Michelle O’Neill implied to this newspaper that there was little point in Sinn Fein taking their Westminster seats given that the tight arithmetic in the House of Commons is of little relevance given Mr Corbyn’s support for Brexit (she also reiterated the fact that SF are of course, in any event, “proud abstentionists”).

Mr Corbyn’s long apparent sympathy for the IRA is such that he is unfit to be prime minister. But at least on his visit to Belfast yesterday he gave some clues that his premiership might not be as reflexively pro republican and pro unity as we might all have been anticipating.