In the orange corner however, Mervyn Storey MLA demurs:

Playing the national anthem for the national team was never a problem. Others are trying to make it a problem now.

There are two fundamental mistakes in this statement: firstly, it has always been a problem (to non-unionists at least) and to claim otherwise is simply denial. Secondly, the “national anthem” and the “national team” don’t refer to the same nation. Never mind the potential offence, playing the British national anthem for the Northern Ireland national team is a category error. While Northern Ireland remains part of the UK, its football team is not a UK-wide team, and should not use UK-wide symbols. Equally, England should get their own anthem, as Scotland and Wales have already done. As one commenter puts it:

This is my point, it was stupid, England played GSTQ, then two minutes later we played GSTQ? The funniest thing at Old Trafford was the confused look on all the English faces and you could actually hear them chatting to each other during the match, I can imagine the conversation of “here mate, why are you Paddy’s singing our song?”

God Save the Queen is a dirge, but it is the anthem of the UK and will remain so. It is entirely appropriate for UK-wide organisations, but not for those based in one of the constituent countries, which should develop their own symbolisms, even if only to avoid confusion like in the incident above. The possibility that this may ease the discomfort of nationalists is a welcome side effect, but should not be the prime reason for change.

A proper NI anthem would also be useful in for Irish rugby, where proper parity could be achieved through playing the team anthem (Ireland’s Call) and the local anthem (of the jurisdiction) at all matches, North or South – the current (equally offensive) fudge that Ravenhill is a “foreign” ground would then no longer be an issue. This may either prompt, or be dependent on, an acceptable Northern Ireland flag to go with it.

I have long been under the impression that Danny Boy was the (unofficial) anthem of NI, but the Tele only lists it as one of ten options (some of which are patently silly). I think this is a missed opportunity to promote what could be a fine anthem. From wikipedia:

Weatherly did, however, acknowledge that “Danny Boy” was sung “all over the world by Sinn Feiners and Ulstermen alike”, and noted that the song had “nothing of the rebel song in it, and no note of bloodshed”.

If we are to have anthems at all (and sometimes I doubt the wisdom of that) surely it is better that they evoke wistful nostalgia than echoes of conquest.

Less obvious are those things that do not have their own names and which, if discussed at all, tend to hide behind the names of related but distinct things. This is a more difficult problem than the above examples, because dealing with it is not as simple as mentally substituting “Derry” for “Londonderry” – one must often expend some effort to unpick what the speaker actually intended to say.

One such example is the ambiguity between the island of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Careful speakers will make the effort to disambiguate them, but it becomes tricky when using derived terms such as “Irish”. Still, it is a well-known problem and that awareness prompts people to call for clarification when the speaker has been sloppy.

I have been reminded recently that there is a less-appreciated, even insidious, blind spot in our terminology, and that is for words describing the communal divide. It used to be common practice to use “protestant” and “catholic”, but in recent years it is more acceptable to use “unionist” and “nationalist”, despite the obvious limitations. This has prompted the emergence of the horrendous terms PUL/CNR¹, but even those fail to capture the essence of the concept.

To help explain, please indulge me in a personal reflection.

I am not a Protestant. I am not even a Christian. Whatever way I’m wired, I don’t have the capacity for religious belief. I understand the desire for certainty, hope and joy, but religion does not fill that void.

I am not a Loyalist. I’m not a paramilitary, but neither am I an Orangeman or a monarchist. Orangeism leaves me unmoved and its arguments ring hollow. I have no interest in royalty or its trappings, and although I can tolerate the monarchy as a purely symbolic institution, I am strongly against both inherited power and the establishment of any church.

Nor am I a Unionist. I am comfortable with the current constitutional arrangement, but I would not die to defend it, and I strongly believe in making the border as invisible as possible. But neither am I a nationalist – although national identity can sometimes be a useful basis for political organisation, in Ireland nationalism (of both flags) has failed us disastrously.

And yet, I still came from somewhere. I grew up in a PUL family, went to a state school, played in a marching band (for two weeks; I was lazy), watched the parades until the Tunnel riots (my dad didn’t quit, but he never walked with the Orange again). I don’t pronounce the “H” at the beginning of “H”. I’ve had to bite my tongue on at least one occasion to stop myself saying “that’s a bit more protestant looking”. It’s all still a part of me, no matter how far I’ve strayed from the true path.

Am I British then? Obviously, but it’s too broad a term that does not convey the particular Ulsterness of PUL culture. And I am equally (maybe more so) Irish – perhaps helped by the great age of my grandfather (born 1889) my family was steeped in Irish culture and history. The language was a step too far, mind (that caused at least one argument with my dad).

So (to return to the point) the question I am asking is: what are you left with when you take the P, the U and the L out of the PUL boy (or equally, the C, N, and R out of the CNR)? What do you call the tribe, the community, the ethnic group, when you are deprived of the usual shorthand? Don’t we need precise names for the things we are discussing, rather than easily-misunderstood euphemisms?

In many such cases, a minority is disadvantaged in some way, but the only fair solution appears to be to change the entire system. The majority who do just fine out of the current system are thus upset that they are being forced to change at the behest of a minority concern. In others, one group has traditionally held more power than the other, and fears for its prospects if the balance of power is changed.

The standard, and sensible-sounding, solution is that both sides must come to the negotiating table. We usually approach negotiations from the standpoint that there are two parties, one who supports proposal A (the thesis) and another who supports proposal B (the antithesis). They then sit down and trade off various things until they come up with a proposal C (the synthesis) which both can (perhaps reluctantly) support.

But this assumes that both sides are motivated to negotiate because the fourth alternative of inaction is unacceptable to both parties. If one of the proposals is itself “do nothing” then this model breaks down. The “inaction” party can simply refuse to engage for as long as they like, until the “action” party either gives up or resorts to extreme measures (such as violence). This is how revolutions happen. In many cases the “inaction” party are not being wilfully stubborn, they just don’t comprehend that there is a problem in the first place. If the “action” party resorts to extreme measures, then the “inaction” party feel justified in treating them as malcontents or criminals. This is how counter-revolutions happen.

We need a better framework for action/inaction disputes.

(This post is based on a comment I made on Ian Parsley’s blog)

STV in NI is deterministic: all the second preferences of an elected candidate’s votes are counted and then scaled down by the surplus fraction before being transferred, resulting in fractional votes for the remaining candidates. For example, say that the quota is 900, and candidate A is elected with 1000 votes. The next preferences of all A’s votes are counted and the totals scaled by a factor of (1000-900)/1000 = 1/10 before being added to the appropriate candidates’ totals. A is left holding the balance, which equals the quota, and the total number of votes in play at any stage thus remains constant. In this way, each vote for A is treated identically.

By contrast, in RoI general elections only surpluses attained on the first count are scaled. Subsequent surpluses are transferred using random selection. Instead of counting all votes and scaling down, a random sample of votes equal to the surplus is counted and then distributed at full value. Furthermore, only the last batch of votes given to the candidate is eligible for selection. For example, say candidate A has 800 of the necessary 900 quota, and candidate B with 200 votes is eliminated. A is elected with 1000 votes, a surplus of 100. To distribute this surplus, 100 of the 200 votes which were transferred from B are randomly selected (A’s other 800 votes are ignored). These are then counted and transferred accordingly. Again, A retains 900 votes (the quota) and the total votes in play are constant, however not all of A’s votes are used.

This random element introduces sampling errors – a different choice of 100 random ballots may well produce a different result, and even get a different candidate elected. We can use standard statistical methods to estimate the errors in these processes and determine how much the candidates owe to the voters, and how much to chance.

Consider count 11, the distribution of Nolan’s surplus of 326. We pick 326 ballots from O’Clochartaigh’s transfers to him of 1015, as those transfers were the ones that pushed Nolan over quota. Now, the p=.95 error in a random sample of 326 out of 1015 is 4.47%, and 4.47% of 326 is approximately 15. Therefore we can expect a 15-vote variation either way in the distribution of Nolan’s surplus. The equivalent error for O’Cuiv’s surplus is (1034 of 2101) -> 22 and for Walsh it is (116 of 2706) -> 10. Assuming that each random choice of ballots is independent, the expected error in the final count is sqrt(15^2+22^2+10^2) =~ 28. We can see that a victory in the final count by 17 votes is not a statistically significant result, and therefore has more to do with what order the ballot papers fell out of the boxes than how many went into them in the first place.

What does this mean for the candidates? Not much, as the legal method has been followed. It does however show that haggling over low double-digit margins of victory has nothing to do with the will of the electorate. They might as well just toss a coin for it.

The vote totals for eliminated candidates are assumed to be error-free, even though prior surplus transfers will introduce small errors. These errors make little difference to the results as the error bar formula is relatively insensitive to population size.

Numbers were taken from the first recount data in @misteil‘s spreadsheet here. Error bars were calculated using the utility here. The rules for STV in RoI general elections are here. Thanks also to @garygillanders for pointing out a mistake in my original calculation.

Nobody defends sectarianism. It is a motherhood and apple pie question, to which only one answer is possible. Although the dictionary definition of sectarianism is anodyne – “excessive devotion to a particular sect, especially in religion” according to dictionary.com – it has become so linked in the popular mind with “conflict” and “violence” that to accuse someone of sectarianism smacks of hyperbole, tantamount to an accusation of evil. The common reaction is to scoff, and follow up with a counter-allegation of condescension. And there is some justification to scoff at modern “sectarianism”. Compared to the violence and fiery rhetoric of the recent past, the antics of politicians today are relatively tame.

On the other hand, the accusers have plenty of their own justification. Despite peace, attitudes are still hardened. Security walls in urban areas are growing, not shrinking. Politics is still organised along the same old lines which to many seem to be the very definition of sectarianism. But “sectarianism”, like “apartheid”, is too loaded a term to use for the uneasy peace. “Tribalism” is often heard as an alternative, but has undertones of savagery. The shared-out future needs its own terminology, one that recognises the progress that has been made, while highlighting the distance left to go.

Our divisions are probably best described as communalism: “loyalty to the interests of one’s own ethnic group rather than to society as a whole”. This one term captures the fundamental problems of Northern Ireland – the lack of common purpose, the assumption of unbridgeable difference, the inward-looking defensiveness – while lacking the shrill overstatement of other more commonly used terms. Its unfamiliarity encourages a more thoughtful approach to the issues than hackneyed phraseology could hope to achieve. But most importantly, it is possible to imagine being in favour of communalism, so to accuse someone else of it is a substantial charge, less easy to dismiss as empty rhetoric.

If progressive politicians wish to attack the record of the major parties, particularly on the CSI strategy but also on their limited popular mandates, it is the charge of communalism which will stick.

UCUNF was caused by an external event – a change in the approach of the Conservative Party towards politics in Northern Ireland. No longer standing aloof, the Tories would stand wholeheartedly in every seat in the UK. But after decades of neglect, the NI Conservatives were judged to be incapable of winning seats by themselves, and so an approach was made to the UUP. The resources of the Conservative Party would be made available to the ailing UUP in exchange for their support in Westminster. Many NI Conservatives leaped on this development as a means of taming the Unionist beast, but these hopes were naive – the UUP took the money and ran roughshod over the concerns of the local Conservatives. The national Conservative Party recognised that the UUP candidates were the most likely to get elected, and sold out their own members instead. The Ulster Unionists emerged bruised from the subsequent electoral humiliation, but stubbornly unchanged.

The UUP leadership campaign was an opportunity for reflection, internal debate and soul-searching. While neither candidate set the world on fire, the solid victory for Tom Elliott was a missed opportunity. The spectacle of a hall full of old, grey men voting for a man who looks, and behaves, older and greyer than his years was telling.  Voting for a safe pair of hands when the wind is at your back is admirable restraint. Voting for a continuity candidate when the ship is sinking fast is wilful negligence. While Trevor Ringland’s subsequent ultimatum to his new leader was misjudged, there is no doubting the genuine frustration of many in the Liberal/Civic wing of the party.

Finally, the selection process for next year’s Assembly elections is ensuring that new faces are firmly shut out of Stormont. Harry Hamilton and Paula Bradshaw, two of the party’s finest young hopefuls, have been effectively vetoed by their local associations. Generational change in the UUP is as distant now as it has ever been.

The DUP has been steadily encroaching onto UUP territory since devolution, and the UUP has been unable to move onto more promising ground. Like the proverbial frog in a saucepan, the Ulster Unionists don’t seem to feel the water coming to a boil around them, even after the loss of all their Westminster seats. Perhaps only a disastrous Assembly election would be enough to make them jump – but a more likely result would be a mediocre one in line with their ever-lowered expectations. Ian Parsley is still holding out hope that the UUP could yet transform themselves into a non-sectarian People’s Party like the one I (and others) have advocated – an attitude which I find curious in the extreme, given his own membership of the local Conservatives, which on paper would be a much better foundation. I suspect his rosy perception of the UUP has been coloured by viewing it through the lens of an atypical representative. While this is personally understandable, it makes for poor political judgement.

The former big beast of NI politics is surely dead. It’s just taking a very long time to fall over.

What unionism needs is some serious thought and analysis of our problems and how to lay them to rest permanently; it needs to develop some broader perspectives and comparative work with other European countries who have had similar ethno-religious divisions.

It needs to consider how to make Ulster an attractive place for its best people to stay in and how to attract the best newcomers to settle here, it has to foster direct relations with the other regions of the UK with similar ‘post-industrial’ problems.

So far, so good. But he then follows it up with the most jaw-droppingly naïve statement of the entire series:

Finally it needs to be able to stand up and say quite clearly why Ulster is not Irish

As they say on Mythbusters, “there’s your problem!” Such a blithe dismissal of one of the fundamental pillars of the current settlement beggars belief. Are there many more people out there who still recoil at any suggestion of Irishness? What hope of extending support for Unionism if the national identity of nearly half of the population is to be discarded? Is he seriously suggesting that Unionist politicians try to evangelise everyone away from Irishness? If there is going to be any creation of a Northern Ireland identity it can only be an inclusive one containing the best of both traditions. That will mean accepting that NI most certainly is Irish, in addition to whatever other things it may be. Any attempt at exclusion will undo decades of painstaking progress and kill for another generation any chance of a permanent settlement.

Unionism needs ideas because we should not have a former terrorist as first minister, or even deputy.

No, we should not. So the question Unionist politicians need to ask themselves is: “what’s so badly wrong with us, that so many people would rather vote for a former IRA commander than for us?” I’m still waiting for an honest answer to that question, and I’m not expecting one from Dingley any time soon.

Mr McCrea had accused Mr Elliott of inflicting a “painful insult” on PSNI Gaelic footballer Peadar Heffron, who was severely injured in a dissident car bomb attack.

In an extraordinary counter attack last night, Mr Elliott said he had been deeply hurt by his rival’s remarks.

“To make these lowdown comments that he has, I must say I have to question, for the first time, Basil McCrea as a colleague,” Mr Elliott said.

Amid appeals that the race should not become personal, the Fermanagh/South Tyrone MLA said he now feared the party could be split.

“With this type of campaign I fail to understand how we can have any semblance of a united party at the end of this leadership campaign,” he added.

“If this is allowed to continue I believe it will destroy the party.”

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/battle-for-leadership-lsquocould-destroyrsquo-uup-14934610.html

McCrea wants to ‘reach out’ — but to whom? The sort of voters he’s after haven’t gone to Alliance; they didn’t go to the Conservatives (in the post-1990 period) and they didn’t go to UCUNF. So what would make them want to go to another reinvention of the UUP? He may want to make overtures to the SDLP, but how does he live with their increasingly ‘green’ agenda? How does he win over that mix of non-voting ‘Garden Centre Prods’ and pro-Union Catholics without diluting his brand of unionism even more? And how does he build his pluralist credentials if he closes the door to UCUNF? Meanwhile, Elliott will want to attract back the voters who have left the UUP. But how does he do that unless he swings it to the right of the DUP — and in the process loses the McCrea wing of the party? No one should underestimate the scale of the task facing the UUP’s next leader.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/why-leadership-battle-could-tear-party-apart-14926651.html

My problem with it is that I miss the intellectual argument that a good society – inclusive, positive and pluralist, or nice to families, businessmen, farmers, children and old people – is necessarily one located within the Union. It seems to me that you can prioritise the Union (or a United Ireland, or a confederal Belgium for that matter) as a constitutional concept, or you can promote a state which is generally nice to all of its citizens, but you have to choose one as the priority over the other, and my choice will always be for the second, with deep suspicion of anyone who tells me that the only way to achieve that is by accepting their vision on the first. And my suspicion is that more voters in Northern Ireland are beginning to feel that way; and I am not sure that any party with ‘Unionist’ in its name can ever appeal to them.

In my view, the key to a settled political future is leadership, vision and the selection of coherent policy choices informed by the interests of the wider population of Northern Ireland and not just of those who actively vote for or against the Union.

Owen Polley follows up with:

If Northern Ireland can be made to work economically, then it will work politically. It makes little sense for unionists to keep pushing the constitutional issue to the fore. If instead the focus is on economic achievement, contributing to the politics and culture of the UK and ensuring that Northern Ireland is a desirable place to live for everyone, then support for the Union will flourish.

In an earlier piece, Christopher Montgomery poured cold water on that line of argument:

As Marxists and honest republicans could both point out, when you consider the full spectrum of unionism, which runs from self-regarding, status quo-entrenching Alliance members, all the way to piously non sectarian, reactionary Tory integrationists, the hope has been the same, and it was of nationalists. That one political act or another of ours, be it amelioration, cooperation or outright appeasement would result in the same thing: it would dim their nationalism. It hasn’t.

Lee probably shoots closest to the mark when he says in a response post:

Making Northern Ireland better economically is a no brainer regardless of the perceived political benefits for Unionism or not.  It is what needs done.  The budget cuts pretty much remove choice in the situation as well.  The idea that we fix the economics and we fix the politics has its attractions.  However, for a number of reasons I remain dubious that it will prove so straighforward.

The issue with which all of the above are struggling, in their separate ways, is the idea that nationalism can be killed with kindness. Variations on this theme can be found throughout the liberal wing of Unionism – acceptance of Irish culture, improved cross-border co-operation and/or economic prosperity will convince sufficient numbers of nationalists to acquiesce in the Union. That the fabled Catholic Unionist has not yet turned out in numbers at the ballot box is, depending on how Liberal one’s Unionism, evidence that either not enough has been done, or that it is a futile exercise. Both interpretations miss the obvious flaw.

There probably aren’t that many Catholic Unionists out there. There is no doubt that they exist, but not likely in the numbers that some assume. There are, however, plenty of Pragmatic Nationalists. These might be content for the Union to continue, given sufficient reassurances, but would never consider self-identifying as unionist. Unfortunately, the Liberal Unionists are not reassuring to the Pragmatists because, as Lee has implied, their logic is completely backwards.

For Liberal Unionists, doing the right thing by Nationalists is a tactic by which they hope to achieve the strategic goal, which is maintenance of the Union. For even the liberal wing, Unionism is an end in itself, with economic and social policy positions a tool to that end. This is a reversal of the stated argument for Unionism, which is that the Union is demonstrably the best means to protect Northern Ireland’s economy and society. Strategy and tactics have exchanged places.

For the Pragmatic Nationalist, economic and social well-being is the strategic goal, and all else is tactics. The Liberal Unionists may attempt to court him by pledging support for his concerns, but this support is not rooted in principle. If policy concessions do not result in an increase in overt support for the Union, he rightly fears that the Liberal Unionists will be revealed as fair-weather friends. So long as the Union remains the top priority, over and above the well-being of nationalists, Pragmatist  support will remain elusive.

The solution is for the Liberal Unionists and the Pragmatic Nationalists to come to an arrangement under which they work together in the best interests of the economy and society as a whole, regardless of whether that implies the long-term continuation of the Union. This would require a significant change in mindset on the part of the unionists, one which many may find unpalatable. But if any common ground is to be found between unionists and nationalists, the future status of the Union must be recognised as merely a means to a shared end, and not an end in itself.

The question goes from being whether there will be a united Ireland to how
Ireland will be united

You overstate your case. The GFA is quite consistent with Ireland never being
united, if the people continue to vote that way. This kind of presumption is
what drives unionists away. The Forum for Peace and Reconciliation is a prime
example – any hint of a preordained outcome and you end up preaching to the
choir.

Irish nationalism can take the old road of a “one size fits all” future or it
can walk into a new one in which unity is neither a unionist nightmare nor a
nationalist pipedream.

It doesn’t matter how you dress up nationalism, it is nationalism itself (or
nationalisms, as we have at least two) that is the problem. You must accept that
there will be multiple national identities in NI for the foreseeable future. So
the question is, do you want to build a fair society regardless of the national
identity of the individual, or do you want to build a new national identity? If
the former, then you have to accept the separation of nation and state, the same
way we have the separation of church and state. If the latter, you will be
waiting a while.