Political effects of Southern Ireland remaining in the UK

Let's say that the Home Rule Act, which was passed in 1914, is instead introduced a year earlier, and passed in 1913. That way Home Rule is given to Ireland (excluding Ulster) by the time the First Word War breaks out, and consequently is not delayed - meaning that Southern Ireland most likely doesn't split from the UK.
What would the political consequences of the entirety of Ireland remaining inside the UK be? Would the IPP continue to be the dominant party in Ireland, or would it fade away once its primary objective was achieved? Would the results of general elections in Ireland tip the balance of the UK-wide results?
 
In my TL, Reds vs. Blues (which, admittedly has a much earlier POD than that), I have the IPP fade into irrelevance, as new, more mainstream parties develop. The IPP starts haemorrhaging votes, and later membership, to the new centre-right, centre-left and centrist parties, with the more pro-independent nationalists (think the Irish version of the SNP) hoover up the rest. There's still a republican party and a pro-agrarian party in the devolved assembly as well.

With a much smaller number of Irish seats, it would be easier for mainland parties to gain a majority.

Also, when you say "Ulster", do you mean the 9 counties (i.e. all of it), 6 counties (OTL NI), or 4 counties (solidly protestant majority)?
 
In my TL, Reds vs. Blues (which, admittedly has a much earlier POD than that), I have the IPP fade into irrelevance, as new, more mainstream parties develop. The IPP starts haemorrhaging votes, and later membership, to the new centre-right, centre-left and centrist parties, with the more pro-independent nationalists (think the Irish version of the SNP) hoover up the rest. There's still a republican party and a pro-agrarian party in the devolved assembly as well.

With a much smaller number of Irish seats, it would be easier for mainland parties to gain a majority.

Also, when you say "Ulster", do you mean the 9 counties (i.e. all of it), 6 counties (OTL NI), or 4 counties (solidly protestant majority)?

Interesting, I'll have to look at your timeline. When I say 'Ulster', I refer to modern-day Northern Ireland.
 
In the event of a successful Home Rule Act, and Ireland remaining in the UK after WW1, it's quite possible that Ireland will end up peacefully becoming independent anyway after WW2, just as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand did.

If this doesn't happen, then lots of people in contemporary Ireland might feel uncomfortably dominated by the English (similar to OTL Scotland). It's difficult to avoid this problem given the overwhelming demographic dominance of England.
 
Interesting, I'll have to look at your timeline. When I say 'Ulster', I refer to modern-day Northern Ireland.

Ah, ok. Well, I had Ireland obtain home rule in 1912(IIRC), with the four provinces being given regional devolution, and everything from the home rule parliament downwards voted using STV.

In my TL Ulster (the 9 county version), of course, evolved in its own way, with a combination of pan-Ireland and Ulster-only parties (nothing different there then. :biggrin:), but with more cross-community stuff.

Irish Labour merged with the Labour Unionists. Liberal Unionists and Tories merged together into a UUP analogue. Liberals merged with the alt-All-for-Ireland League, obligatory DUP-expy political Orange Order party. There are two major Irish nationalist parties - one equivalent to the SNP (moderate, monarchist), and the other to the SSP (republican), a pro-Agrarian party, and a syndicalist/communist party.
 
What would the political consequences of the entirety of Ireland remaining inside the UK be? Would the IPP continue to be the dominant party in Ireland, or would it fade away once its primary objective was achieved? Would the results of general elections in Ireland tip the balance of the UK-wide results?
There are numerous general elections which could have changed as a result of all of Ireland remaining inside the UK. The earliest would be 1923, which saw the three main parties incredibly close to one another in terms of seats, and the entirety of Ireland remaining the UK would definitely have made an impact on the outcome. Which party formed the government in this alternate timeline would entirely depend on the status of Irish politics in the aftermath of the introduction of Home Rule.
 
Funny on an Irish site, someone made the point that if Ireland had stayed in the UK then the Brexit vote would have been different, didn't take kindly when I pointed out the butterflies between '22 to 2016 made that impossible to tell.
 
What would the political consequences of the entirety of Ireland remaining inside the UK be?
One issue is whether Ireland, until fairly recently, was naturally more socially conservative or if that was more due to de Valera effectively inviting the Roman Catholic Church into helping govern the country. Politics in Northern Ireland is generally much more conservative than the rest of the UK but they've got their own special circumstances going on there. It could make votes on issues such as divorce, legalisation of homosexuality etc. trickier. Be interesting to see how having a larger rural population, roughly 40% in Ireland versus about 10% in the UK, would shake out.

If Ireland gets Home Rule then I have to wonder how long it would be before parts of Scotland start agitating for a similar deal. A federal UK in the making?

On the EU front this continued United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is going to be much more enthusiastic about policies like the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), modern day Ireland having around six and a half times the percentage of population working in agriculture that the UK does. Depending on if they eventually get any tax setting powers or not Ireland likely doesn't develop as fast since they can't lower them as they did in our timeline with the Celtic Tiger. They should however still receive EU funds since IIRC they're issued based on regions.
 
If Ireland gets Home Rule then I have to wonder how long it would be before parts of Scotland start agitating for a similar deal. A federal UK in the making?

I would like to direct you to the Government of Scotland Bill (1913), which was suspended during WWI, and never picked up again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Scottish_devolution#Government_of_Scotland_Bill_1913
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29048884
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/7th-june-1913/6/scottish-home-rule
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1913/may/30/government-of-scotland-bill
 
One issue is whether Ireland, until fairly recently, was naturally more socially conservative or if that was more due to de Valera effectively inviting the Roman Catholic Church into helping govern the country. Politics in Northern Ireland is generally much more conservative than the rest of the UK but they've got their own special circumstances going on there. It could make votes on issues such as divorce, legalisation of homosexuality etc. trickier. Be interesting to see how having a larger rural population, roughly 40% in Ireland versus about 10% in the UK, would shake out.

If Ireland gets Home Rule then I have to wonder how long it would be before parts of Scotland start agitating for a similar deal. A federal UK in the making?

On the EU front this continued United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is going to be much more enthusiastic about policies like the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), modern day Ireland having around six and a half times the percentage of population working in agriculture that the UK does. Depending on if they eventually get any tax setting powers or not Ireland likely doesn't develop as fast since they can't lower them as they did in our timeline with the Celtic Tiger. They should however still receive EU funds since IIRC they're issued based on regions.

One of the points I raised in the other forum is if you have Ireland in the UK then assuming WW2 happens (which I think is fair to say it would) you have potential long term impacts that leave the UK in a stronger position (economically, militarily) than OTL which might impact the relationship with the EEC/EU from the start.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
There are numerous general elections which could have changed as a result of all of Ireland remaining inside the UK. The earliest would be 1923, which saw the three main parties incredibly close to one another in terms of seats, and the entirety of Ireland remaining the UK would definitely have made an impact on the outcome. Which party formed the government in this alternate timeline would entirely depend on the status of Irish politics in the aftermath of the introduction of Home Rule.
And IPP or others might be likely to prop up Asquith in that election.
 
aybe there is an IREXIT to counter this TL's version of BREXIT so Ireland can remain part of the European Union
 
That seems highly speculative to me. This PoD is over a century before the referendum. There might not even be an EU, let alone Brexit.

Exactly my point, trying to map out from 1922 to 2017 and proclaim that a Brexit vote might be different is crazy imo, the butterflies are just too huge.
 
I once read about Synthetic Control Method where they create a counterfactual version of a country or region X in order to extrapolate what if the OTL "treatment" had never happend. Venezuela without Chavez, Cuba without revolution, Basque country without ETA terror etc. Synthetic (Southern) Ireland without independence was somehow created from a donor pool out of various rural OTL UK territories, mostly rural, and they found out that OTL RoI had fared definitely worse then Synthetic Southern Ireland up until the 1960s, but from the 1970s the Celtic Tiger policies started to balance the negative effect of independence. Just saying, not my tea.

First of all, you have no border issues in Ireland. Something like the Troubles would've also been muted inside the same political system, a GFA-style modus vivendi with ethnic quota still seems doable. What I don't see happening is giving any Irish territory special treatment when the time is ripe for moral reform issues like abortion or same-sex marriage. Devolution schemes would've sprung up for region after region and in order to remain a professional country, I see the UK steamlinig competences between Westminister and devolved regions, like café para todos in OTL modern Spain. They will rather take a lesson from Germany whose imperial constitution already mandated that civil and penal and a national matter, period. This also fits more to the centralist tradition of the UK rather than the US fabric where civil and penal law are state matters. This UK may even get itself a one-piece constitution and a one-piece civil code in order to manage this streamlining.

Disengaging from the Empire would likely go as IOTL, the Irish flirting with agricultural subsidies may smoothen a crypto-EEC accession. The UK profiting a lot from the CAP itself, there won't be a UK rebate. And a crypto-Brexit also won't happen because Westminister would've to deal with a lot more periphery. Southern Ireland my want to bail out, Scotland would be next, Ulster Protestant go nuts, any Westminster government may not survive this as it threatens the fabric the UK as TTL knew it.

TL;DR: All of Ireland will have the same civil and penal law as Great Britain, join the crypto-EEC in the 1960s or 1970s and become as good a member as France and Germany. With no precedent for the British Home Islands tearing apart, special snowflake tendencies become more risky. They won't even think about anything like a Brexit with this crypto-EEC/EU if it even features something like Article 50.
 
On religious issues Ireland would be theoretically more conservative but having a more religious population doesent stop Wales and Scotland from having left wing nationalists party dominate.

I'd imagine the IPP would take on a similar role to the snp
 
Possibly a more generous distribution of tax revenues (as per the Barnett formula) would reduce rural deprivation. Whether that would in turn reduce migration to the rest of the Empire/Commonwealth and US is hard to say. (In Scotland, a significant percentage of graduates used to flee south every year from the 1930's onwards).
 
An othe point if the bill passes in 1913 do we have World War I ? Even assuming an Archduke is killed the next year home rule a year early could mean Civil War in Ireland ( meaning the Island) now if that happens is Britain in any condistion to enter the war other then navel support ?
 
Top