There is one more thing @longbelly : In line with the Good Friday Agreement there is the potential for a binding referendum leading to the unification of Ireland (i.e. secession of Norther Ireland from the United Kingdom)
The Good Friday Agreement committed the UK and Irish governments to respect the ‘principle of consent’.
This states that the two parts of Ireland have the right to be reunited, so long as that decision is “achieved and exercised with and subject to the agreement and consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland.”
If both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted in favour of reunification, the Good Friday Agreement further specifies that "it will be a binding obligation on both Governments to introduce and support in their respective Parliaments legislation to give effect to that wish."
This is the bit that gets to me. The utter silence that this issue has lead to the only successful political murder i.e. a terrorist attack targeting a politician on UK soil since The Troubles.
As to the utter shambles of a referendum
What makes this cock-up even more monumental was the phenomenal mess the Cameron government made of the AV referendum. We are basically suffering because the UK although formally devolved has an utterly messed up electoral system, that would be unacceptable to any contemporary democracy.
At this point we can’t even plan travel two weeks in advance. And this is just one family. We have absolutely no clue whether planes will fly from and to the UK after the 29th March or whether we will have health insurance while we are in Europe or or or…
It absolutely makes sense that the IRA in whatever formation would target Scotland. It is the weakest link for the Brexit movement. The IRA has a vested interest for Scotland to fall out of the Union and terrorising the population would seem an effective approach to this end.
@anon73430903 I was under the impression that the UDA relied on the support of RUC and UK Intelligence/Armed Service in order to be effective; however, I agree, the Troubles 2.0 is certainly something to avoid.
@smut_clyde Of course, that was 51% of the 70% of the electorate that exercised their right to vote; so more like 35.7%.
This might makes only sense if you ignore 800 years of history. Half of the Northern Irish population are descendants of protestant settlers (some of them refugees from the Republic of Ireland). They are not too keen on being unified with deeply Catholic Ireland.
A helpful analogy would be compelling American settlers to go home and return Native American land to those they stole it from. Kind of complicated.
Except Wales. Wales isn’t represented in the Union flag.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s the whole point of the Northern Ireland problem: the Unionists and their paramilitaries specifically don’t want (to put it mildly…) to leave the Union.
Oh, that would be nice but I’d say it’s vanishingly unlikely. There are genuinely staggering numbers of very, very angry people out there.
At the moment, they are mostly muttering to themselves or frothing on radio call-ins but if they don’t get their Brexit, they will be wide open to an appeal from some right-wing demagogue (probably not Nigel, despite his rhetoric, he doesn’t seem to have the genuine malice required).
They are already talking about how democracy has failed.
And in addition to that, Labour voters are in many cases in favour of leaving, Labour Party members are mostly pro-remain.
So Corbyn has the problem that if he comes off the fence, he will annoy one or the other lot.
He also of course has to have an eye on people who are not “safe” Labour voters because he can’t win an election only with those. He needs to somehow appeal to swing voters/previous non-voters.
Who, just like any other group in the UK, are pretty split on the issue.
I think there is plenty of reason to refuse an extra 3 months. Staying in this limbo of “maybe she will, maybe she won’t” puts a huge strain on European companies; they finally need to know what’s going to happen, so they can start implementing measures to deal with it.
The only way the EU is going to accept an extension is if the British Government can give a damn good reason why that would be good idea; and at this point, the only good reason would be a new referendum. A new deal is out of the question (they already got the best one they’re ever gonna get), a general election is out of the question (would take too long and create even more uncertainty), and three more months of May beating her head against a wall is out of the question, too (just too painful to watch, and a colossal waste of time)
Some Labour Party voters in some areas of the UK might be for leave. But there is absolutely no evidence that a majority of Labour Party voters is pro leave unless you want to discount the population of e.g. London.
I agree with everything else you said - but article 50 has always been there (it was the British that insisted on it), just no one considered it a remote possibility in 1998. Or in 2015…
Another factor to a possible extension are the elections for the EU parliament on 26/5. It would be very odd to include the UK, but if they’re still a member at that point, I don’t know if there are legal possibilities to exclude them. Also, the other member states will be busy with their respective campaigns and have even less patience for british shenanigans. There’ll also be a new president of the commission afterwards, probably Weber, so that will make things even more complicated.
Question for british users, are your parties even prepared for an election? That’s not something you can just make up last minute.
For anyone who doesn’t know about British general elections, the government cannot make any new decisions for six weeks prior to the election as this is seen as unfair interference.
I meant successors to the Provisional IRA. I was just trying to avoid a long-winded explanation of what “Republican” means in the Northern Ireland context.
Like everything in the UK, the majority can support something but if enough people in the right(/wrong) places support the opposite, the opposite is what we get.
That is true in the sense that there was no specified procedure but whether there was nevertheless an ability to unilaterally withdraw is, as with everything in international law, disputed.
This paper (linked from the wikipedia article you linked) sets out the arguments fairly well albeit for obvious reasons coming down on the “You can’t unilaterally withdraw” side of things.
The “fundamental change of circumstances” stuff is what Rees-Mogg, Cox and Grieve were getting on the record last night about the possibility of just discarding the back-stop if we felt we no longer wanted it.
