‘A place apart’, or integral to ‘our precious Union’? Understanding the nature and implications of Conservative Party thinking about Northern Ireland, 2010–19

Kenny, Michael; Sheldon, Jack

doi:10.1080/07907184.2020.1847418

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Northern Ireland's majority for Remain, Brexit's destabilisation of the constitutional status quo ante and the febrile political atmosphere it had engendered all appeared to provide new impetus for the rapid completion of Sinn Féin's historic project of Irish (re)unification. The UK government's subsequent (mis)handling of the Brexit process paid little regard not only to Nationalist sentiment and concerns in Northern Ireland (and, ultimately, also turned its back on Ulster Unionism (Kenny and Sheldon, 2020)) but also to those of devolved government in Wales and Scotland, with constitutionally destabilising consequences (McEwen, 2020;Wellings, 2020;Wincott et al, 2020) and the creation of new political openings for separatists to pursue their political objectives. Since the referendum, Sinn Féin has been represented by both its Unionist (see BBC News, 2021; Murphy and Evershed, 2019) and Nationalist (see, for example, Hanna, 2019;Leahy and Halloran, 2020) political opponents and its media detractors on both sides of the Irish Sea (see, for example, Harris, 2019) precisely as seeking to use or leverage Brexit in pursuit of its primary political objective: that of Irish reunification.…”

Section: 'Wearing the Green Jersey'mentioning

confidence: 99%

An bhfuil ár lá tagtha? Sinn Féin, special status and the politics of Brexit

Evershed

Murphy

2021

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article we critically examine how Sinn Féin responded to Brexit, why, and with what consequences. By destabilising the UK’s territorial constitution and intensifying debate about Ireland’s constitutional future, Brexit has represented a moment of unprecedented opportunity for Irish republicanism. However, this has been offset by the very real political and economic risks it has posed for the island of Ireland. We argue that Sinn Féin’s pursuit of ‘Special Status’ for Northern Ireland represented an attempt to mitigate Brexit’s risks, rather than to leverage its opportunities. This approach came with political costs for the party, whose recent electoral surge has arguably been in spite of rather than because of it. We demonstrate how Brexit has served to reshape Sinn Féin’s politics, and how it has functioned to further moderate its ‘Eurocriticism’.

show abstract