Is it possible a majority don’t actually want to power-share?

Alex Kane, Irish News, April 25th, 2025

IS IT just me, or does it seem a little odd that George Mitchell, almost 30 years after steering Northern Ireland to the Good Friday Agreement, felt the need to tell an 800-strong audience of young people to stay here and not leave peace to fate?

“Today, I ask the people of Northern Ireland, especially the young people, to look forward, into the future, the deep and sometimes unfathomable future, and to enshrine the peace, making it last for their own children, and their children’s children, and beyond… There is now a clear path in front of them. This path may even appear easy to some. To others, it is a path that can be happily left to fate. But those of us who have seen war must counsel against complacency.”

Even by my relentless and remarkably high levels of pessimism, that’s quite a gloomy assessment. And it got worse.

After referencing the ongoing disputes over language and flags, couched in divisive rhetoric, he told his audience that they were “needed here in order to sustain this ongoing peace”.

“Do not let your truths and your dreams leave when there is so much to be done at home. Do not allow the bomb dust to obscure the winds of change. We pass the torch to you.”

Is it really that bad?

Is it really that bad? Does he actually believe that if the present generation – and I’m guessing that the young people listening to him were mostly in the 18 to early twenties range (peace babies, in other words) – left here, that there is a chance that what now passes for peace would be supplanted by the old ways and bad days?

Because, if that is what he was hinting at, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the peace process (it hasn’t even reached the stage at which we can describe it as a peace settlement) is a very delicate, very vulnerable entity. As it happens, that is a conclusion with which I concur.

Yet, to be honest, I don’t think it would make one iota of difference to what will happen here in the next few decades if every single member of his audience remained here or every single one of them left to pursue lives and careers anywhere else. Why would it matter?

Why does he even assume that their presence would be beneficial in terms of the journey from conflict stalemate to conflict resolution?

Don’t the members of his audience have the same biases and differences as the pre-GFA generation? Don’t they have competing and contradictory constitutional preferences?

The roots of the problem

Don’t they buy into the long-established narratives of the ‘roots’ of the Troubles and, almost certainly, buy into the allocation of blame to the respective us-and-them communities?

Does he believe that staying here would prevent them from having to deal with the shadow of a border poll (which will come at some point), or the realities of two communities always wanting different political/ constitutional destinations and outcomes?

Change does require input from each generation. It was my generation, after all, which endorsed the GFA. But it was my generation which made a complete dog’s dinner of providing the good governance which seemed to be on offer in April-June 1998.

Which may go some way to explaining why, according to polling a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, ‘confidence in democratic institutions and satisfaction with the current operation of the political system here are all strikingly low’. The lack of confidence in political parties or government was ‘overwhelming’, regardless of the background or religion of those polled.

So, here’s a question. Since the vast majority of those who vote do so for parties which have a very clear stand on the constitutional issue, is it possible that their accompanying ‘overwhelming’ lack of confidence in those parties is based on a perceived belief that their parties of choice – unionist or nationalist – are failing to promote and prioritise their interests?

Is power sharing something nobody wants but cannot let go?

Or, putting that another way, is it still possible, after all this time, that a majority really don’t want to power-share because they regard power-sharing as an impediment to their preferred political/constitutional choice?

Maybe, just for a change, we need a serious conversation about the realities of politics in Northern Ireland rather than the usual keep-on-trucking and ignoring the truth

Now, no disrespect to George Mitchell – or everyone else who comes to praise rather than bury the GFA – but maybe, just for a change, we need a serious conversation about the realities of politics in Northern Ireland rather than the usual keep-on-trucking and ignoring the truth.

As he says, it is better than it used to be; yet not so good that the parties can actually endorse a jointly agreed Programme for Government, let alone fix a pothole epidemic or reduce a hospital waiting list.