Alliance MLA says party 'can't deny' conversation on united Ireland - but leader says it is a low priority for members

But its leader Naomi Long says that constitutional issues aren’t a priority for the party’s members.

Alliance, which was once explicitly pro-union, could now have switched its allegiances in favour of a radical change to the constitutional status quo. Leading members have been increasingly sceptical about the union with Great Britain since Brexit.

A survey by the University of Liverpool revealed that a clear majority of party members with a preference on the constitutional question would vote to leave the UK. 38% would choose to end the Union in a referendum, 27% would maintain it and 4% would abstain, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

Sorcha Eastwood told the BBC yesterday: “We know the lessons of Brexit where people got involved in serious profound change to the fabric of a country, and obviously then the impetus in terms of economy, trade social issues – all those sorts of things. The worst thing we could do would be to deny it and not have the conversation”.

Naomi Long said post-Brexit political crises haven’t raised the importance of the constitutional issue for Alliance members. “When you look at the research that was done, the issue of the constitutional question is way down the priority list for our members. And that is reflective of where it has always been”, Mrs Long said.

The party’s deputy leader Stephen Farry told the BBC’s Nolan Show yesterday he is “open-minded” on the issue. However, he says there isn’t currently “a proposition for a united Ireland” – comparing the issue to Brexit.

The Alliance leader attributed the change in attitudes within the party to Brexit. “I wasn’t particularly surprised by the outcome. I’ve been saying since 2016 that Brexit was moving the dial in that direction, because the people who vote Alliance are not motivated by the constitutional politics of Northern Ireland. That’s not their motivation. But they are concerned about issues like our engagement with Europe and our international engagement.”, the party leader told the BBC’s Sunday Politics.

Brexit – and Northern Ireland’s relationship with the EU – is clearly a factor driving many Alliance representatives. This has resulted in increasing criticism of the United Kingdom, but much warmer relations with the Irish government. Governing Fianna Fail is a sister party of Alliance, and the Irish deputy PM attended the Alliance conference in Belfast at the weekend.

How much of that hostility is anti the UK state per se, and how much is aimed at the current Tory government, will become clear if there is a change in Downing Street after the next election. If Alliance members believe in its position that the Windsor Framework offers unique opportunities to Northern Ireland, it seems unlikely they would want to abandon that and cut Northern Ireland off from its largest market in Great Britain entirely by voting to leave the United Kingdom.

While the party’s overwhelmingly clear message has been about building a united community in Northern Ireland – apparent differences of emphasis have emerged between the leader Naomi Long and some of her MLAs on issues such as Irish legal action against the United Kingdom over the Legacy Act. That action was backed or justified by the party’s deputy leader Stephen Farry and MLAs Eoin Tennyson and Sorcha Eastwood. But despite repeated attempts to ascertain the personal view of Naomi Long, she has declined to give it.

The survey of Alliance Party members was carried out for a book by Professor Jon Tonge from Liverpool University. Not all of the detail has been made public, but Prof Tonge has told the BBC that “We have surveyed all Alliance members and there has been a substantial shift towards Irish unity”.

He said that when the last survey was carried out in 2006, only one in six Alliance members favoured constitutional change – and that the majority of support for Irish unity was from members who joined the party after Brexit.