Usually when national polls are done, on either voting or any other topic, Northern Ireland is not included. There are many reasons for this, most notably because Nord Iron’s party political system is very different and so thus asking them whether they want Labour or the Tories to have a majority in the House of Commons is in some senses much more complicated. So I was very interested to hear that the Belfast Telegraph decided to poll Northern Irish voters on the EU question.
It is usually assumed that everyone in the United Kingdom outside of England is a raving Europhile, so having that tested was bound to be revealing. The top line figures are REMAIN 56%, LEAVE 28%, DON’T KNOW 16%. So far, so Europe, but as usual with these things, it’s all down to the crosstabs. Unionists broke down like so: REMAIN 21%, LEAVE 54%, DON’T KNOW 25%. Hold on, you might be saying now if you’re handy with arithmetic: how can Remain be leading Leave across all of Northern Ireland two-to-one, while the Unionist vote is so pro-Leave? If this occurred to you, then you may well have guessed the answer already. The Nationalist vote was REMAIN 91%, LEAVE 8%, DON’T KNOW 1%.
The fact that Unionists don’t like the EU while Nationalists do isn’t particularly surprising. But looking at how stark the figures are does make me wonder if there isn’t another angle on why Brexit might cause the troubles to restart in Northern Ireland. Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, spoke at the CBI conference right after Cameron yesterday to say why the UK leaving the EU would be problematic for the peace process in Nord Iron. It mostly revolved around how the EU is an “important, perhaps underestimated, enabler of peace in Northern Ireland”. But looking at the poll numbers in the Belfast Telegraph, there is perhaps a simpler reason why Brexit might cause problems for peace in Northern Ireland: because if there is that much of a difference of opinion between Unionists and Nationalists, how would the Nationalists cope with being ejected from the EU while 90% of them wanted to stay? Thinking about this deeper makes me realise that just having the referendum at all could be tricky for Northern Ireland, but there’s not much we can do about that now.
What do I think? I’m loathe to be scaremongering and wish to try and be objective when considering this point. There are a lot of reasons why Brexit is a bad idea without having to dig deep into the well. I’m also not keen on making a scary prediction for what Brexit might bring, since the scariest thing about leaving the EU is that no one, whatsoever, can predict what would happen if Britain did so. However, those numbers did make me think there might really be something in the “Brexit = NI Troubles” argument. If Brexit would almost certainly see Scotland leave the Union, why wouldn’t the same move shake up Northern Ireland politics?
And Wales too. Fascinating article posted just the other day: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/11/crisis-without-end
In short, when a union starts to break up, it becomes difficult for the rest to hold together.
A good start but the analysis needs to be completed.
A major argument around Brexit surrounds “getting control of our borders”. The Common Travel Area agreement we have with the Irish Republic long predates our membership of the European Union. Supporters of Brexit should say whether they envisage that this agreement will remain in place.
If the Common Travel Area agreement remains all EU citizens can travel to the Irish Republic and cross an open border into Northern Ireland and hence the UK and of course to paraphrase Nigel Farage all 5 million Irish citizens would have the right to come and settle in the United Kingdom at any time they felt like it.
If the supporters of Brexit would do away with the Common Travel Area agreement then the introduction of border controls on the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic is bound to be a flash point and demeans that Good Friday Agreement.
So continue to critically analyse what Brexit is actually asking for.
An added layer to this is that the peace process has been helped by the UK and Eire both being in the EU. In the Second World War, Eire was neutral, so republican sympathies (at the very least) meant that Unionists and Republicans were not on the same side. Thanks to the EU there is no chance of the two not being on the same side in a war, so the nature of the constitutional settlement matters less, or at least, the stakes are lower. If the UK left the EU things would look different.
Well, yes, I don’t know if it would inevitably, but of course it could with relatively high probability unless considerable effort and expense was put in.
Any signficant and ill-though-through constitutional change to status of the UK as a whole and its relationship with the rest of the european / international community is going to put pressure on the UK-Ireland border and the internal politics of Northern Ireland, pressure of the sort that in the past has often led someone somewhere to seek recourse to violence and unrest, which carries always with it the risk of organised, armed paramilitary violence, which in turn risks overt or covert internal civil war with as many sides as you like involved.
Now, ‘the troubles’ is a simplification and maybe we would be unlikely to return to riots, martial law and an IRA bombing campaign a la the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, but increased lawlessness and gang-type activity on the basis of distrust within the communities and distrust in the government of the province would be a real possiblity, surely?
Other factors that could undermine stability (maybe not as much or as immediately) also include Scottish withdrawal from the Union, and possibly even also some of the changes to Human Rights law being sought.
Everything is connected.
There’s also the trade issue. Unless the UK (or Northern Ireland) stays in the EU customs union after Brexit, there will have to be border control on goods.