The Conservative Party

Ban-jani said:
Will it fuck
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Don't know .... doesn't the current NIP agreement have to be reviewed every 5 years? that would make it 2014 and an ideal opportunity for them to call a referendum as its a shit show now (only 10 working days in) and it doesn't look like its going to get any better. The more Ireland circumvents the UK with their use of direct ferries the less NI will look to ''Great Britain'' for a solution .
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
If England chose to leave the Union, where would the rest of the UK that would be left, hold it’s parliament?
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There wouldn't be a rump left. It would be a complete balkanisation. Without England there would be nothing to keep Wales and Scotland bonded together. Separate legal systems and no shared border.
 
Chris in London said:
Since you ask it’s because last night, instead of staying up to explain why I thought someone on the internet was wrong, I went to bed.

Here’s the thing. What follows is a list of the legal steps Nicola Sturgeon can take to compel the government to implement Indyref 2:

1. Nix
2. Nada
3. Niente
4. Zip.
5. Square root of fuck all.

Nicola Sturgeon is in this context an agitator. She has in practical terms a platform from which she can whip up opinion but nothing else. For a long time the government will be able to say “indyref 1 was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put this issue to bed, and it has been. Call us back in another thirty years or so.” And there is not a thing, legally, that the Scottish government nor anyone else can do about it.

The position in Northern Ireland is very different for two reasons.

1. The Secretary of State is under a statutory duty to call a border poll if it seems to him that a majority of the population of NI desire unification. (Under the terms of the GFA unification will require positive referenda both north and south of the border. I have never seen any freestanding opinion poll in Ireland with anything less than a significant majority for unification, so I am working on the basis that if the majority in NI wants unification, it will happen.)

The language of the Act is important in this respect. It says that the Secretary of State “shall exercise the power [to hold a referendum] if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland"

That word ‘shall’ is key. It means ‘must.’ He has no discretion in the matter, the law compels him, in the scenario posited by the section, to act in a particular way, ie hold a border poll.

There are different ways in which it might appear to the Secretary of State that majority favours unification. One way is if the opinion polls consistently show a majority. Another way is if parties nationalist parties command a majority in the assembly. The key point is that if the Secretary of State thinks that a majority would favour unification, the law says he has to have a border poll.

That obligation is not limited in time, nor is it limited in scope. The obligation to hold a border poll depends entirely on the state of opinion in Northern Ireland. No matter when - in six months, or in six years - there is an obligation to hold a border poll if public opinion seems to be in favour of unification. This brings me to the second point.

2. What some have said is the weak point in the GFA is that the trigger for a border poll is the Secretary of State’s opinion, and if he says ‘it’s my opinion that the last ten polls showing an 80% majority in favour of unification are unreliable’ who’s to say he’s wrong?

The answer is that this is justiciable. That is to say, the courts can compel the Secretary of State to hold the border poll if they judge he is breach of his statutory duty. There is a long established jurisprudence that requires ministers of the crown, including the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to act reasonably when exercising a statutory power or duty. If in the opinion of the court the decision that the opinion polls are all wrong is so unreasonable that no reasonable Secretary of State could possibly hold that view, he can be compelled to hold a border poll. So it doesn’t just depend on the Secretary of State deciding ‘nah, the polls are wrong.’ If he does that unreasonably, he can be made to order a border poll. All it would take is for someone to bring the necessary claim in Northern Ireland.

You know what? My guess is that someone somewhere probably would.

So, the driver to unification is the opinion of the people of Northern Ireland. Boris has driven, and is continuing to drive, a fucking huge wedge between NI and the rest of the country. There is a border between GB and NI that runs down the Irish Sea, that was the cost of Getting Brexit Done. There is a feeling amongst many in NI that England just doesn’t care about Northern Ireland. When the shelves in the shops are empty, and freight can’t get into or out of the province, it’s not that hard to see why. The NI Brexit sell out underpins this - it suggests that the government viewed NI as expendable. There’s a clip somewhere of Boris saying to a bunch of NI businessmen ‘if you’re asked for paperwork when sending goods to England, tell them to ring me.’ That aged well, didn’t it?

So that is why Nicola Sturgeon comes nowhere near to being the biggest danger to the Union. She is essentially powerless other than to whip up public opinion, which can be legally ignored for a long time by the government. In 20 or 30 years time, all that resentment may come back to bite the government in the arse. Maybe it won’t. We keep being told in another thread that the EU is heading for disaster (though there is no evidence of that) so who knows where Indyref 2 will be by then.

In Northern Ireland, by contrast, there is a ticking time bomb, if you’ll pardon the analogy. My assessment is, the longer Boris is in office, the more public opinion in NI is likely to move in favour of unification. Once it becomes a majority, the law will dictate that a border poll, the single biggest threat to the Union, must take place.
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That’s a very long post that you could have just asked me instead if I knew the situation in NI vs Scotland from a legal perspective, I do, and had discussed it with others over the last week.

Whilst the legal aspects of both situations are important, the political will of the populations is far more crucial. As it stands the nationalist parties are in a minority, in NI, and the polls aren’t even close to applying pressure to the Secretary of State.

It’s all about pressure and the pressure isn’t necessarily increasing as much as some on this side of the Irish Sea are desperate for it to do. The day to day lives of people in NI are barely, if at all affected, so this talk of “border” is applicable for trade and won’t make a difference to individuals travelling, nor the vast majority of the population going about their every day lives.

The other point is that there is a huge way for the nationalist movement to go to get to the point of pressure being applied to the SoS and by the time that momentum has grown, there’s the likelihood that technology may have answered the question regarding the GFA and the DUP majority votes to withdraw from all EU customs and SM terms it has, falling back within the UK CU only.

A lot of your post is hyperbole and exaggeration, which is what many are drumming up as a stick to beat people on the forum with who voted leave (I voted remain FYI). A quick snap of some oranges not getting to their targets and into the media it goes, when in reality there is food on the shelves, generally speaking and there’s been a few hiccups.

I happen to be very close friends with a Belfast Catholic who also has family heavily on the Nationalist side, in fact his 2nd cousin is none other than Gerry Adams.

He’s big into his politics and has said NI being in both the UK and EU trading orbit is a great opportunity and welcomes it. The opportunity to be in both is a big plus for NI and once the teething problems are over, this will show.

Our NI posters on here have said they cannot see the will to leave being there any time soon, but you know better hey?

Regarding Scotland, as I said earlier, political will and pressure is everything. Look at Brexit, Parliament wasn’t mandated to leave, they didn’t have to vote for Article 50, the referendum wasn’t legally binding. The easy option would have been to forget Brexit and move on surely? Kick it into the long grass and ignore what the people wanted? But only the pressure for a democratic vote to be upheld and the mandate from the people was to leave.

Likewise if Sturgeon gets a huge majority this year, the pressure intensifies, the rhetoric increases. It goes from “Scotland being ripped out of the EU against its will” to “Scotland is an English colony against its will”. The rhetoric has already manifest online by independence supporters and will only grow, likely to come out of Sturgeon’s mouth very soon.

Of course the legalities means NI has always been more of likely candidate to leave historically, but whilst they are nowhere near it in terms of political will, whereas Scotland is gunning for it on a daily basis, I’d say Sturgeon who wants to end the union is far more a likely candidate to do it than Johnson who has added some additional checks at ports between our island and our sister nation on the island next to us, which isn’t a “fucking huge wedge”. It’s an inconvenience added to freight. A huge wedge would have been far more political.

I really think you overestimate the will to break up the union in NI and seriously underestimate the power of political will coming from a population.

For the record, I don’t think either will leave the UK for a significant period of time but Sturgeon and her legions are the greatest risk at this very moment in time.
 
Ifwecouldjust....... said:
Don't know .... doesn't the current NIP agreement have to be reviewed every 5 years? that would make it 2014 and an ideal opportunity for them to call a referendum as its a shit show now (only 10 working days in) and it doesn't look like its going to get any better. The more Ireland circumvents the UK with their use of direct ferries the less NI will look to ''Great Britain'' for a solution .
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The DUP will have a majority then still, it’s highly unlikely that political will in NI will have changed substantially enough that the UK SoS will be forced to give the vote.

These terms of “shit show” and “huge fucking wedge” are hyperbole based on teething issues.

Nobody with a brain thought from day one everything would be dandy but these issues won’t be happening in 4 years time.

As it stands, within the GFA, only 20% of the country has elected to be known as solely Irish, that’s a pretty good indicator of how nationalism is viewed. Whilst Catholicism is growing, it’s oddly not resulting in the same growth of nationalism over loyalism.
 
Fode N The Hole said:
There wouldn't be a rump left. It would be a complete balkanisation. Without England there would be nothing to keep Wales and Scotland bonded together. Separate legal systems and no shared border.
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If England ever left the union there is no union.

That’s not arrogance, it’s just there wouldn’t be that much point considering border, legal systems and parliaments etc.

There may be a continued shared currency and central bank but that’s it.
 
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