So the SDLP has decided against any merger with the Labour Party. According to RTÉ:
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has "ruled out" a merger with the Labour Party.
"We're not doing mergers with anybody, the SDLP is standing on its own two feet," he said.
But had that been a serious proposal? There's this:
It has been reported that Labour leader Ivana Bacik said she was in "extensive discussions" on collaboration with the SDLP.
At her party conference in Cork yesterday, Ms Bacik said: "Working with our sister party, the SDLP, we want to deliver on our shared ambition to achieve a social democratic vision, across 32 counties.
"That's why we support calls for a unity referendum."
That last is interesting in itself, Labour seeking a referendum, but surely Bacik was merely restating the status quo about the LP/SDLP relationship - the two parties independent of one another but working together. That one of the parties appears functionally more right-wing than the other (I'll leave it to others to guess which), is almost neither here nor there. And given the debacle of the rather nebulous link-up with Fianna Fáil, which amounted to nothing in the end, small wonder the SDLP isn't entirely keen on any other alliances, formal or informal. Then again Eastwood might look at the variable fortunes of the Labour Party in the south and wonder if that was necessarily the star to hitch his enterprise to. Though the same could have been said about Fianna Fáil to no small degree.
There's a different point too about this.
The SDLP not an all-island party. Granted it represent nationalism to some extent, but it has a larger rival on that side in the shape of SF which is an all-island party. And SF is increasingly seen as a serious contender in the South. In some ways how can the SDLP seek to compete? Oddly the situation isn't the mirror image of Unionist parties, all of which are overwhelmingly individual Northern Ireland based (the few oddities like the NI Tories make little headway). But Unionism doesn't need - though there have been - alliances with the Tories to dominate the community they represent. So there's this intriguing asymmetry, where nationalists and republicans in the North are represented largely by an all-island party, but unionists are represented by local parties. Perhaps it is as simple as the latter going with the effective grain of the union. It's not going away today or tomorrow. Perhaps if it were in a greater existential crisis then there'd be more effort put into building links east/west between unionist and British parties.
And the SDLP falls between these stools, as it were - indeed ironically, one legitimation it can call on is the reverse of that of Sinn Féin, in that it takes seats in the House of Commons. Small wonder Sinn Féin is both on principle and no doubt strategically averse to that idea.
What does the SDLP envisage the future to be? Say a referendum on unity is fought and won. Where will the SDLP in that context? Does it remain a regional party? There's presumably little appetite for it to organise south of the border - indeed just thinking about that I've never once heard calls for it to do so. Has that possibility been floated? If it goes into alliance who does it select as the likely partner? Again who could it go into alliance with? And in a way that's the key question when asking what is the SDLP for and what does it represent and what does it see its role both prior to and after a unity referendum?
So far the vision - at least as articulated this last few days seems to be restricted to the North.
At the SDLP conference yesterday, he said the party outlined a long-term vision for "coming back".
"It's not about the SDLP and who well we do, it's about the kind of country that we want to build," he said.
He said Northern Ireland "had not been fixed" since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
"We have a massive opportunity now to fix it but of course, we've the DUP holding everybody back because they won't even allow us to go back into government," he said.
Mr Eastwood said he is "absolutely determined" to continue as leader of the SDLP.
In one way that's fair enough. But if others are pushing towards some sort of engagement with unity is that necessarily the best place to be positioned politically?
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