“If there is a border poll, who on earth is going to vote for the uncertainty of constitutional change? They’re gonna say, I’ll tell you what, just give me more of the same, please.”
It is often said that unionism is standing at a crossroads. The old certainties have gone. The sense of shared purpose that once bound its parties together has thinned with every election cycle, replaced by competing visions of how best to defend Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.
In the wake of Brexit, demographic change, and years of internal rivalry, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mike Nesbitt, thinks the movement must face an uncomfortable question of not whether unionism still matters, but whether it knows how to talk to the people it hopes to represent. For him, the answer lies not in one grand merger or pact, but in a more fundamental rethink about tone, coherence, and strategy.
As his party prepares for it’s annual conference this weekend, he’s once again trying to push the conversation beyond slogans and symbolism. In his view, the future of unionism depends less on declarations of loyalty and more on building a vision that feels relevant, modern and confident about its place in a changing Northern Ireland.
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“Well, first of all, we already have unionist unity in that every unionist wants Northern Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom,” Nesbitt says when I asked whether unionism has become too divided.
That, he adds quickly, is only the starting point. “Once that said, we diverge quite significantly in terms of the vision and the strategy to achieve that.” In other words, agreement on the destination does not settle the argument over which road should be taken to get there.
Mike Nesbitt has been here before. In his first spell as leader, he called repeatedly for a new approach to cooperation among the pro-Union parties. A decade later, the idea still lingers, though he now frames it less as a merger and more as an overdue modernisation. “So before I took over for the second time, I called quite frequently for a realignment within unionism,” he says. “So that you have a party that embraces the kind of more traditional vision of unionism and a party that is much more progressive.”
He reaches for a phrase long associated with his own party. “So this party, my party, the Ulster Unionist Party, traditionally has been called a broad church. So we bring in all sorts of views. I’m not sure that works that well,” he admits. “A quarter of the way into the 21st century, I think people want a party that’s more cohesive and coherent. Cohesive as a team and coherent in its messaging.”
Mike Nesbitt links that rethink of unionism’s identity to a wider vision for Northern Ireland itself, one he’s encapsulated in this year’s conference theme, hope through prosperity. “My vision, which is summed up in the theme of the conference, is hope through prosperity,” he says. “If you go back to 1998 and that miracle of an agreement, hope peaked. People had a real sense of we are going somewhere.”
More than a quarter of a century later, he believes that sense of hope has faded. “I think if you go and ask the majority of people today in 2025, do you still have that level of hope, they’re not going to say yes,” he says. The same goes for the economic optimism that followed the peace process. “The big phrase at the time was the peace dividend, where the money that we don’t spend anymore on security would be invested in the economy and people would feel more prosperous. Again, I don’t think sufficient numbers feel that they’ve had a really good bite at that cake.”
For Nesbitt, the answer lies in ensuring that stability and prosperity are felt across society. “I want to see peace through prosperity, which would maximise the number of people who are financially secure, seeing their children or grandchildren well educated, have access to good quality public services, particularly in health,” he explains. His argument is that a confident, content Northern Ireland is the strongest possible argument for remaining part of the United Kingdom. “Under those circumstances, if there is a border poll, who on earth is going to vote for the uncertainty of constitutional change? They’re gonna say, I’ll tell you what, just give me more of the same, please.”
For all that, Mike Nesbitt doubts a full-scale realignment is coming. “I could see the merits of that kind of realignment,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s going to come. I think there’s a lot of self-interest within the various parties.”
Instead, he sees value in selective cooperation, the kind that helped the Ulster Unionists make gains in a Westminster contest a decade ago.
“So what I look to as we look ahead to May 2027 and the Assembly and local government elections, is replicating something that I did in 2015 at Westminster, which was probably my most successful election, where we picked three seats, two of them were seats where the outgoing MP was a member of the DUP, and we very aggressively targeted them and knocked one out.”
He adds that cooperation and competition can coexist. “At the same time, we had the DUP canvassing for Tom Elliott of the Ulster Unionist Party in Fermanagh, South Tyrone. So we were cooperating in one area, contesting in two others. It’s the ultimate mixed message, but actually it’s possible to do.”
It’s a typical Mike Nesbitt answer. Pragmatic, layered, and resistant to easy soundbites. His vision for unionism’s future is not revolutionary, but it is deliberate. It is less about forcing everyone into one party and more about making the movement persuasive again to those who have tuned it out.
For Nesbitt, that case will only succeed if it speaks to people who do not automatically see themselves reflected in the Union. The challenge, as he frames it, is to make unionism coherent, credible, and compelling to a generation that takes nothing for granted, including the Union itself.
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