Steve Baker, a British minister of state for Northern Ireland and a former chairman of the Tory Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG), suggested that it might have been better if the Belfast Agreement had provided that there would be no change in the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom unless a “super-majority” of 60 per cent of voters in Northern Ireland voted for a united Ireland in a referendum.
He conveniently forgets the blindingly obvious truth that there would have been no Belfast Agreement at all if anyone had suggested that such a super-majority would be required for Irish unity. The idea that a minority of 42 per cent of voters could in perpetuity keep 58 per cent of Northern Ireland voters within the United Kingdom against their wishes is, frankly, grotesque.
The strange thing is that such a viewpoint is being articulated by a British office-holder at this juncture. Does he really think that there would have been a majority in the Republic’s referendum for such a minority veto on Irish unity?
Baker was as virulent an opponent of the EU as one can imagine, calling it an obstacle to world peace that needed to be ‘torn down’
Of course, he might defend his argument by citing the views of the late Seamus Mallon who expressed scepticism about the value of Irish unity arising from a pro-unity vote of “50 per cent plus one”. But wishing in retrospect that the Belfast Agreement would have put Irish unity almost permanently beyond the reach of any future majority in Northern Ireland is political nonsense.
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Buyer’s remorse over the result of the UK’s Brexit referendum, which would probably have failed in the context of a 60 per cent threshold, may afflict him now that the UK is clearly seen to have been seriously damaged and weakened by the choice which Baker and his ERG colleagues grossly mis-sold to the British people. Baker was as virulent an opponent of the EU as one can imagine, calling it an obstacle to world peace that needed to be “torn down”. He also famously expressed public remorse over the way in which Boris Johnson and Lord Frost conducted their negotiations on Northern Ireland with the EU.
Equally strange is the failure of Baker and his senior minister, Chris Heaton-Harris, to understand that it was perfectly reasonable for any Irish taoiseach, especially a fairly young one, to express the opinion that unity would come about in his lifetime.
If there is clear and consistent evidence in coming years that more than 50% of Northern Ireland’s voters would vote in favour of unity, the Belfast Agreement obliges the UK … to hold a referendum
The Belfast Agreement only provides for holding a Border poll if the Secretary of State believes there is a majority of voters in Northern Ireland who would vote for unity. That precondition has simply not been reached. And, despite Sinn Féin bluster, is very unlikely to be reached in the next decade. But if there is clear and consistent evidence in coming years that more than 50 per cent of Northern Ireland’s voters would vote in favour of unity, the Belfast Agreement obliges the UK as a matter of international treaty law to hold a referendum.
Many forget that a majority vote for Irish unity is highly unlikely unless the proposed model for it has been worked out in detail and is understood by voters, North and South.
Brexit — which Baker and his colleagues foisted on a befuddled electorate — never involved any detailed voter consideration of its likely consequences. And we now see the folly of such a referendum for the UK. Opinion polls there now show a popular recognition that Brexit was a mistake.
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Shifting northern opinion from its current minimum level of 60/40 opposition to a united Ireland would require a lengthy debate on the nature of an acceptable united Ireland to occur on both sides of the Irish Border. Sinn Féin beat the Border poll drum loudly but they never advanced a model of unity with any chance of popular acceptance. The only model they espouse publicly is a unitary 32-county socialist state. That looks like a lead balloon in terms of realpolitik.
Moderate centre-ground northern voters will shy away from a form of Irish unity which threatens to ignite sectarian violence
Once we grasp the reality that there will not be a majority North or South of the Border for an undefined Irish unity in principle, but that any unity model will have to attract a very considerable number of northern voters who want to “kick the tyres” of any proposal, the likelihood of a 51/49 referendum on unity recedes.
Moderate centre-ground northern voters will shy away from a form of Irish unity which threatens to ignite sectarian violence, because it offers nothing at all to unionists and loyalists except absorption by latter-day “Anschluss” into a unitary state that is a cold place for their identity and traditions. That is why some confederal model of unity is by far the most likely to eventuate. But we are nowhere near that outcome; first, because we haven’t even debated it and, second, because majority support for it will not happen for at least a decade.