Sooner rather than later, Alliance will have to step off fence on a border poll

This remained the party’s position for 40 plus years. You have only to recall the reaction to Anna Lo saying she would prefer to live in a united Ireland to realise how recently that was the case.

In 2014 the party was accused of abandoning its “middle ground position” after the then MLA described herself as “anti-colonial” and said the partition of Ireland was “artificial”.

Since then elected members have dodged the question. However, much like Northern Ireland itself, Alliance has undergone something of a transformation in recent years.

As polls and the last census showed there is a growing section of our society that considers itself neither unionist nor nationalist, neither strongly British nor Irish, but happily identify as Northern Irish.

That section of mainly younger, aspirational voters are the same people Naomi Long’s leadership has been successful in recruiting.

They are the voters who are credited with helping the Alliance bounce and moving the party into a sphere where they are now genuine contenders, taking seats in places that were once impossible to penetrate. 

But they are also the same voters who do not have an ideological attachment to the border or absence of it —  people who will base their future decisions, not on a flag or a passport, but on lifestyle choices, a return to EU membership, where they will be better off in terms of health, education and opportunity.

It is in this space that Naomi Long had acknowledged that the party may have to take a position on the constitutional question in the future. Some would say in the not to distant future, given the pace of demographic change.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday Politics, Mrs Long said: “The things that are pressing on people’s minds, our health service, the cost-of-living crisis, the fact that we have to deal with climate change — these are the issues that are gripping people, not the constitutional question right now.”

But what Brexit and the pandemic have shown is that these very real issues that impact on people’s day to day lives are linked to the border that divides our island.

The very voters who Alliance want to capture and then more importantly retain are politically savvy enough to take those issues into consideration if and when they are asked to make a decision on Northern Ireland’s future. They will want to know where they can access the best health outcomes, where the best opportunities for their children are, whether staying with a Brexit Britain or rejoining the EU in a united Ireland will leave them better or worse off.

Alliance knows its voters and so it knows this, hence the change in language from the leader who would have at one time dismissed ever taking a position on a future border poll because the party had no need to. That’s changing and so expect conversations and careful language as the party of neutrality realises that at some stage it will need to show its hand and declare what side it will campaign in should a border poll be called.