Ireland is one nation and should be one sovereign state

The argument

This argument applies a principle about the proper basis of statehood to the particular facts of Ireland. The principle is that sovereign states are properly determined by national, ethnic and cultural groups — that the boundaries of a state should follow the boundaries of a people rather than the accidents of past administration. On this view a state is the political expression of a nation, and a border which cuts through a single nation is for that reason anomalous, whatever history produced it. The factual claim is that Ireland constitutes one such nation. Irish culture is distinct from British culture, so the island is not a cultural extension of the neighbouring state. Within the island, the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are culturally identical: the distinction drawn by the border does not correspond to a distinction between two peoples. The specific markers offered are linguistic. They share the Irish language, and they share phrases within the English language that mark their speech as Irish — the kind of idiom that is acquired by growing up inside a particular culture and that therefore serves as evidence of common membership rather than of mere proximity. The conclusion follows by applying the principle to the facts. If states should track cultural and national groups, and if the people on either side of the Irish border belong to one such group while differing from the state that currently governs part of them, then the present arrangement divides a nation that the principle says should be whole. The border separates people who share a culture and attaches some of them to a culture they do not share. Because Ireland is one nation, it should be one sovereign state, and there should be a united Ireland.

Context

The people of Ireland are one group with a shared culture and history that is clearly distinct from Britain's

Premises

Counter-arguments

Northern Irish unionists are a distinct cultural group. They do not speak Irish, they do not partake in most parts of Irish culture and they have a strong culture of their own with its own traditions and linguistic dialect. As a result, Ireland's people are not one nation and are in fact two.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Northern Irish Unionist do not share a culture with Irish Republicans. Therefore, they should be distinct sovereign territories.