Thoughts on unity planning, and a Border Poll if it were to happen:
1. It shouldn’t be a binary choice between the Union and a UI. It should have a range of choices encompassing different constitutional arrangements, with voters picking by ranked preference voting (1, 2, 3 etc)

2. The choices which appear on the ballot should be decided by a Citizen’s Assembly-style process. Potential choices could include a unitary UI, a federal UI (North/South or 4 provinces), status quo, the Union with a different form of devolution, or joint sovereignty.

3. A runoff ballot with the two top options from this ballot should be considered. A confirmatory vote should take place if negotiations are required, to provide a choice between the ‘deal’, unilateral action to implement the result, or the status quo.

4. A referendum commission should fact-check and scrutinise claims made, and regulate social media to avoid the mistakes made around Brexit. Political parties, campaigners and orgs should sign up to a pledge on clean conduct for the campaign, enforced by the commission.

5. Current efforts for “united Ireland planning” should become “constitutional future planning” (CFP). It should be broadened to consider, if people voted for the Union in a Border Poll, how NI, the Union, and the south of Ireland could be improved in that context.

It should include efforts to achieve not only a shared island and better north-south links - but shared *islands*, & better British-Irish links, w buy-in from the British government, devolved administrations, & Crown dependencies - w Citizen’s Assemblies integral to the process.

This may solve the issue of unionist buy-in. It is in unionists’ interests anyway to have a say on what affects them - but by having nationalists engaging in planning for the event of a pro-Union Border Poll result/a BP never happening, there’ll be an opportunity for reciprocity.

CFP should include:
• planning for Border Poll scenarios
• entrenching north-south, British-Irish links
• tackling the issues that motivate support and opposition to constitutional change, so as to make NI a better place regardless of its constitutional status

Actual policy areas considered may include:
• regional inequalities in economy & higher education
• flags, identity, culture & tradition (inc a shared Northern Irish identity and strengthening British-Irish cultural links)

• transport (NI east-west imbalance, north-south links, rebuilding an all-island rail network, subsidised British-Irish ferries, better rail links to ports, promoting sustainable transport amid the climate crisis)

• political and institutional reform (strengthening & reforming the devolution settlements, strengthening the north-south/British-Irish bodies, a federal UK with written constitution, more powers/funding from UK govt in exchange for tackling waste/duplication in public services)

The major issue I see is getting buy-in from the British government.

Stronger cooperation requires them to willingly cooperate and broadly comply with the Citizen’s Assemblies’ results. Where that isn’t possible, stronger devolution to counterbalance this is the next best thing.

Overall, NI being part of one country or another isn’t the be-all and end-all.

We’re part of *a system of countries*, & have been since 1998. A UI won’t change that.

Developing the totality of relationships which form that system is key to resolving Qs about our future.

The constitutional question and the questions of belonging/ethnonationality around it is ostensibly the major disagreement in this society - I don’t take a position, but it’s in my interest as a believer in reconciliation & consensus to advance solutions to finding common ground.

Fundamental to that is:
• developing a place that meets the needs of the whole community as far as possible regardless of constitutional status, thereby lessening the importance of constitutional status and the contention around it (as alluded to in the CFP details)

• developing agreement on the process/criteria by which our future in general is determined (not strictly limited to our constitutional status), such that the whole community have maximum confidence that the process will produce a good, fair, unprejudiced result they can accept

Sin é.

(These are my personal views, by the way.)