Is Keir Starmer a Northern Ireland Unionist?

The new prime minister has worked in Northern Ireland and has spoken about making the case for the Union: is he making the Labour Party Unionist?

Sir Keir Starmer’s in-tray, like that of any new prime minister, is so full that prioritisation is near-impossible. Perennially close to the top of the agenda, but not quite breaking the surface, is Northern Ireland, a subject which most British politicians resolutely ignore or approach for a short time with brisk, irritable ignorance and then beat a hasty retreat. Since the Stormont Parliament was suspended in 1972 and direct rule imposed, there have been 25 secretaries of state for Northern Ireland, with an average tenure of two years; Shailesh Vara lasted two months (July to September 2022), while Sir Patrick Mayhew served for just over five years (1992-97). They have been born in England, Scotland and Wales—two were born in Africa—but none has been born in Northern Ireland.

The Labour Party does not have an active existence in Northern Ireland. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), founded in Belfast in August 1970, has traditionally been Labour’s “sister party” in the province, and its MPs at Westminster have informally followed the Labour whip (although its leader, Gerry Fitt, abstained in the confidence vote in March 1979 which brought down the Callaghan government). Until 2003, residents of Northern Ireland could not even join the Labour Party, and since then there has been an entity called the Labour Party of Northern Ireland, but it is not registered as a political party nor does it field candidates in elections at any level.

For many years, Labour was sympathetic towards the Nationalist cause in Northern Ireland, although Roy Mason, secretary of state from 1976 to 1979, adopted a tough approach to security and saw deaths fall substantially during his tenure. In 1981, however, the party moved to a policy of favouring unity by consent, and focused on improving relations between the United Kingdom and Ireland and the effectiveness of Anglo-Irish institutions so that the border became increasingly irrelevant. From 1987 to 1994, Labour’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary was Kevin McNamara, a Merseyside Catholic who was strongly in favour of a united Ireland, and many left-wing backbenchers like Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott adopted an anti-British stance on the issue.

After Tony Blair’s election as leader of the Labour Party in 1994, he sought to challenge shibboleths on a number of policies. According to one report, he summoned McNamara to his office and told him “I don’t want you in my cabinet”, to which McNamara’s response was “Fine”. He was replaced by Dr Marjorie Mowlam, one of Blair’s key supporters, and the party’s stance moved to a more neutral and bipartisan approach as John Major’s government painstakingly developed the peace process following the Downing Street Declaration in December 1993 and the Provisional IRA’s announcement of a ceasefire in August 1994. Labour took office in 1997 and oversaw the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 which created the institutional and political architecture of contemporary Northern Ireland.

Although most Westminster politicians have harboured Reginald Maudling’s famous view of Northern Ireland as a “bloody awful country”, Starmer comes to the premiership with some experience of the province. From 2003 to 2007, while joint head of Doughty Street Chambers, a set specialising in civil liberties and human rights cases, he was human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the oversight body for the Police Service of Northern Ireland which had replaced the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 2001. His role was to ensure that PSNI acted in accordance with the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998, a commitment amounting to one or two days a month. This was in spite of his involvement with the Haldane Society of Socialist Laywers, a group which was sympathetic towards a united Ireland.

After becoming leader of the opposition in 2020, Starmer appointed Louise Haigh, MP for Sheffield Heeley, as shadow Northern Ireland secretary. Previously a public policy manager for insurance giant Aviva, she had no obvious connection to or experience of Northern Ireland, and was shuffled to the transport brief in November 2021 shortly after she had angered Unionists by saying that Labour would not take sides in a referendum on a united Ireland.

It’s not my job to be a persuader for the Union, that was an important principle that led up to the Good Friday Agreement… One of the important principles was that Britain should not have any strategic or selfish economic interest in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. It’s up to the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own constitutional future… We’re a Unionist party in the Labour party, but if there is a border poll we should remain neutral. I think that’s an important principle.

This was not an outrageous position, given the stance of successive British governments over the previous 30 years, and she strongly denied that her move—which was hardly a demotion—was connected to her remarks. However, it did not go unnoticed that they came only a few months after Starmer’s first visit to Northern Ireland as party leader, during which he had told BBC Northern Ireland’s Enda McClafferty that if a referendum on Irish unification were to take place, he would “make a strong case for the United Kingdom”.

Some on the left were sharply critical of Starmer for this stance. One accused him of “playing the Orange card”, somewhat implausibly suggesting he was motivated by politics in Scotland and an ambition “to fashion a new coalition, taking unionist-minded voters from the Scottish Tories”. Among his parliamentary colleagues there was also condemnation. Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the perennial agitating MP for Brighton Kemptown, tweeted that Labour:

are not unionists we are democratic socialists that see strength of people coming together to cooperate. In N.I. we don’t stand but our sister party [the SDLP] is Republican/pro-Irish unification, it is from them & people of N.I. that I take my lead on this.

Veteran left-winger Diane Abbott supported Russell-Moyle’s stance. “My colleague is exactly right. [Labour] is not unionist. We take our lead from our sister party the SDLP who are republican and pro-Irish unification.”

Haigh was succeeded as shadow Northern Ireland secretary by Hove MP and Blair/Brown-era Cabinet Office special adviser Peter Kyle. Although highly rated by Starmer, he, like his predecessor, had no prior expertise or experience, and it was noted that he had never spoken on Northern Ireland since being elected to the House of Commons in 2015. Kyle admitted shortly after his appointment that he was “very mindful of just how much learning I need to do”. In fact it proved unnecessary, as he lasted less than two years in post: when Starmer carried out what was seen as a final, pre-election reshaping of his shadow cabinet in September 2023, he surprised observers by handing the Northern Ireland brief to veteran former cabinet minister Hilary Benn, rapidly approaching his 70th birthday.

Benn had served in the shadow cabinet from 2010 to 2016, latterly as shadow foreign secretary, then had been chair of the House of Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union (2016-21). It was noted that his familiarity with EU matters would be valuable in addressing the Windsor Framework and Northern Ireland’s access to the European single market, and several party leaders in the province welcomed his appointment. Benn had written a report for the Centre for European Reform in 2022 entitled How to Fix the Northern Ireland Protocol, so hardly came to his new responsibilities cold; it may also be that Starmer was keen to include in his top team someone who had nearly seven years’ experience in cabinet under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Starmer was asked about his attitude to a united Ireland at last year’s Labour Party conference in Liverpool. Of a potential border poll, he was dismissive: “I don’t think we’re anywhere near that kind of question. It’s absolutely hypothetical. It’s not even on the horizon.” However, in relation to the political process and re-establishing a devolved legislature and government at Stormont, he took a more orthodox view of Whitehall as an impartial referee. “The role of the UK government as honest broker is crucial in finding agreement, where it may not appear it’s there initially. I’m worried that our government has moved away from that honest broker role.”

There is one other element of Starmer’s approach to Northern Ireland worth noting. Although he has no familial connection to the province (though he took his wife Victoria there for their first holiday after marriage in 2007), he has several key advisers with significant Irish roots. Pat McFadden, the Wolverhampton South East MP who is now chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the prime minister’s “enforcer”, was born to Irish-speaking parents from Falcarragh in Donegal and visited Ireland frequently as a child. Sue Gray, the Downing Street chief of staff and former Whitehall permanent secretary, is the daughter of Irish immigrants to Tottenham, her father from Fermanagh and her mother from Waterford; Gray is married to country singer Bill Conlon, born in Portaferry, County Down, and for several years in the 1980s they ran the Cove Bar in Newry. She was also permanent secretary to the Northern Ireland Department of Finance from 2018 to 2021, and applied unsuccessfully to be head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

Several senior Labour Party figures are also from Irish backgrounds. Morgan McSweeney, director of campaigns, was born and raised in Macroom, County Cork, where his father Tim was prominent in the Gaelic Athletic Association club; his aunt Evelyn McSweeney was a Fine Gael councillor and his first cousin, Clare Mungovan, was a special adviser to the previous taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Matthew Doyle, Labour’s director of communications, had grandparents from Sligo and is a former chair of the Labour Party Irish Society. Councillor Claire Tighe, Starmer’s devolved and metro mayor liaison manager, grew up in Ballycastle, County Mayo, read English and history at Trinity College, Dublin, and spent three years as campaign director for Irish4Europe.

In Northern Ireland politics, it has been an eventful year already. In February, nearly two years after the last elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), having this far boycotted Stormont because of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed to form an executive with the other parties. Sinn Féin’s leader Michelle O’Neill became first minister, an historic event for a Nationalist politician, with Emma Little-Pengelly of the DUP as deputy first minister. The followed the publication by the UK government of a command paper, Safeguarding the Union, which sought to reassure sceptical Unionists that the operation of the protocol was not a threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom.

In March, to widespread astonishment and shock, the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was arrested with his wife on suspicion of rape and other historic sexual offences. He resigned the same day and was replaced by East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson. It further destabilised a party already struggling with deep divisions over the Irish Sea border, and which was still suffering the after-effects of the shock of being beaten into second place behind Sinn Féin in the 2022 assembly elections. However, Sinn Féin was dealt a blow of its own in Ireland at June’s elections for the European Parliament and local authorities when it fell significantly short of expectations, winning only 12 per cent of the vote despite having polled as high as 37 per cent in surveys anticipating the next elections for Dáil Eireann. (I examined Sinn Féin’s problems in an essay last month.)

Last week’s general election provided a confusing picture of Northern Ireland, as I sketched out for The Spectator. Sinn Féin is now for the first time the largest Northern Ireland party in the House of Commons with seven MPs (though they do not take their seats), but they increased their share of the vote only marginally and held the seats they had won in 2019 rather than breaking new ground. However, the Unionist parties have fractured: the DUP lost three seats and now have only five MPs, their lowest tally since 2001. South Antrim fell to Robin Swann of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), while there was huge symbolism in Ian Paisley Jr’s defeat in North Antrim to Jim Allister, leader of Traditional Unionist Voice: Paisley had taken over the seat in 2010 from his father, DUP founder Ian Paisley, who had occupied since 1970. Moreover, Allister was one of the first members of the DUP and represented the party in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007 before quitting in protest at Paisley’s decision to join the Northern Ireland Executive in partnership with Sinn Féin. The third DUP loss, Donaldson’s former seat in Lagan Valley, was captured by the non-sectarian Alliance Party. At the same time, Alliance lost North Down to an independent Unionist, Alex Easton (another former DUP member).

Northern Ireland’s Westminster cohort therefore consists of seven Sinn Féin MPs, five DUP, two from the SDLP and one each from Alliance, the UUP and TUV plus an independent Unionist. It is true that this means Nationalists have the most slender of majorities, with nine MPs compared to eight Unionists, the Alliance MP making up the total. On the other hand, counting the share of the vote, Unionists are marginally ahead with around 44 per cent to the Nationalists’ 38 or 39 per cent. It means that the situation Starmer and Benn have inherited is finely balanced.

The new administration has not been idle. At the weekend, only days after kissing hands as prime minister, Starmer visited Northern Ireland, accompanied by Benn and Gray, to meet the first and deputy first ministers, Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly, as well as representatives of the other political parties. Inevitably, he repeated his mantra of “resetting relationships” and ending the “instability” of the Conservative government.

Being here on day three of the new Labour government is a clear statement of intent about the importance of Northern Ireland to me and my government, about resetting relationships and moving forward in a respectful and collaborative way.

His attention to the affairs of the province has been welcomed. Mary Lou McDonald, the president of Sinn Féin, described the talks as “constructive and very friendly”, while DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the visit had been “very productive”, also saying that the prime minister was a “unionist”. Naomi Long of the Alliance called it a “constructive and positive meeting”.

There is an element, inevitable in any new and untested government but particularly one with an emphatic majority, of interlocutors projecting their hopes and desires on to the prime minister and his team. Labour has pledged to repeal the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which all the political parties at Stormont had opposed, though it may retain in some form the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, chaired by Sir Declan Morgan, which the legislation created. Last month Starmer set out his position on LBC Radio:

There are very powerful arguments and counter arguments. I do want to find a way through this because I think in the end we have to find a way. But doing this in a way which doesn’t have the approval of victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland… is not a sensible way to proceed.

One symbolic issue is the redevelopment of Casement Park in west Belfast. Owned by Antrim GAA and the home of hurling and Gaelic football in the capital, it closed in 2013 but is due to be rejuvenated and reopened in time to host games for the 2028 UEFA European Football Championship which the UK and Ireland and jointly hosting. There has been a series of delays in the redevelopment, and the site has significance beyond mere sporting fixtures: it is named after Sir Roger Casement, the former British diplomat turned Irish nationalist who was executed for his involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the Gaelic Athletic Association has long been regarded by Unionists as a pro-Republican organisation. Hilary Benn has given assurances that the redevelopment is “a very important programme”, but nothing is guaranteed. He argued that there are:

two issues: first is cost and there’s a certain amount of money in the pot but it’s not enough. The second issue is we’re into extra time in trying to get it built in time for the Euros. But Casement Park will be built and as soon as I’m in a position to make that decision, I will. You have to bear with me.

It is certain that Sinn Féin will not let Casement Park drop.

It is worth saying something on the language Starmer used in Downing Street last Friday, which was noticeable and odd. Of course one can forgive a degree of hyperbole in the flush of historic victory. Nevertheless, talking about Labour’s victory, he said the following:

We clearly on Thursday got a mandate from all four nations. For the first time in 20-plus years, we have a majority in England, in Scotland and in Wales. And that is a clear mandate to govern for all four corners of the United Kingdom.

Now, that is manifestly not true as far as Northern Ireland is concerned. Labour does not exist as a political party one of the four nations, and while it is in practical and constitutional terms absolutely true that winning “a majority in England, in Scotland and in Wales”—or indeed a majority of one in the House of Commons—gives any government a “mandate”, it is odd to seek to cast this in moral terms. Starmer is correct that his government has a mandate “for” Northern Ireland, as it does for all parts of the United Kingdom, but to say he has a mandate “from” Northern Ireland is simple nonsense. This would not be so remarkable had he not laboured the issue of having a “mandate” elsewhere.

Is Sir Keir Starmer a Unionist? Should the Unionist community and the parties which represent it be reassured by his assumption of the premiership? Given his work with PSNI, he comes to Downing Street with more experience of Northern Ireland than any prime minister since Jim Callaghan, who had dealt with the beginning of the Troubles when he was home secretary 1967-70; both Sir John Major and Sir Tony Blair largely learned on the job. That is not, however, an especially high bar.

That Starmer said he would “make a strong case for the United Kingdom” in the event of a border poll is an unusually Unionist stance for a British prime minister. The tone until now has generally been set by the speech the Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Brooke, gave in November 1990 in which he declared that the British government had “no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland: our role is to help, enable and encourage”. In any event, the prime minister does not anticipate such a poll in the near future, and recent polling supports this: while support for a united Ireland has risen, and is strong among the younger section of the electorate, the data suggest that the status quo still enjoys a lead of perhaps 10 per cent.

Rhetoric and government are two very different beasts. On Northern Ireland as in every policy area, Sir Keir Starmer will find that he is judged by what he does and the effects his policies have rather than the way he frames his words. The Unionist community is deeply split, especially over the Windsor Framework and everything that goes with it: the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over Northern Ireland, the Irish Sea border and Article 6 of the Union with Ireland Act 1800 which stipulates that “the subjects of Great Britain and Ireland shall be on the same footing in respect of trade and navigation, and in all treaties with foreign powers the subjects of Ireland shall have the same privileges as British subject”. It will be near-impossible, therefore, for any actions Starmer might take to win universal approval from Unionism.

There is little short-term political credit for any prime minister in expending effort on the situation in Northern Ireland. Starmer will need enormous determination and dedication to “service” to avoid the temptation of letting the province slip down his agenda while he focuses on economic growth, public services and foreign and security policy. If he maintains his focus, however, Unionists would be well advised to take his warm words as some comfort but to build no greater assumptions on them. The greater priority for supporters of the Union is to reflect and find a way of presenting their case positively to the Northern Ireland electorate. Downing Street should not be taken as a friend for all weathers, because it never is.