Last week’s EU referendum saw a majority of just under 56% in Northern Ireland vote in favour of ‘Remain’. At 63%, the turnout was lower than in England, Wales and Scotland.
Unlike in Scotland not all regional constituencies voted ‘Remain’. Eleven voted ‘Remain’, and seven voted ‘Leave’. Levels of turnout also varied widely: between 68% (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) and 49% (Belfast West).
The power-sharing government of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein was split over the referendum, with the former backing ‘Leave’ and the latter backing ‘Remain’.
But the DUP’s core rural constituency are farmers in receipt of EU grants. They would (will) be likely lose to out from Brexit. DUP leader Arlene Foster’s support for ‘Leave’ was therefore less than wholehearted. “On balance,” she said, the DUP “recommends” a ‘Leave’ vote.
Sinn Fein also had mixed motives in backing ‘Remain’. In the past it has been strongly Eurosceptic, denounced the EU as a rich man’s club hostile to Ireland’s interests, and backed a ‘No’ vote in first Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
That Euroscepticism has not gone away. But Sinn Fein has woken up to the fact that being anti-EU is not popular in the Republic of Ireland. Backing ‘Leave’ in the EU referendum would therefore have damaged its electoral ambitions in the Republic.
There were also divisions within the Unionist and Republican ‘camps’. The Ulster Unionist Party backed ‘Remain’, while Republican Sinn Fein (a 1986 breakaway from Sinn Fein) backed ‘Leave’. According to the latter:
“(‘Leave’) is the only position that Irish Republicans can hold if we are serious about creating an independent Ireland based on the principles of the 1916 Proclamation. There is no point in removing the shackles of British imperialism only to replace them with the political and economic imperialism of the EU.”
Sinn Fein responded to the referendum result by demanding a border poll: “English votes have overturned the democratic will of Northern Ireland. This was a cross-community vote in favour of remaining in the EU. English voters are dragging Northern Ireland out of the EU.”
Sinn Fein Martin McGuiness leader exhibited a touching other worldliness by declaring: “I believe that such a border poll and the run-in into it can be conducted in a civilised atmosphere, just as the Scottish referendum was.”
But Arlene Foster and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers slapped down the demand. Foster dismissed it as “as predictable as the flowers in May”. Villiers dismissed it as “neither justified nor helpful”.
But the pro-Brexit vote will create major problems for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
According to the “Irish Times”: “Short of the outbreak of war, it is hard to imagine anything worse for Ireland than the news that the UK is to leave the EU.” The UK is the Republic’s largest trading partner, with trade worth over £1 billion a week. But Irish-UK trade could now fall by anything up to 20%.
The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic will now become a border between an EU and a non-EU state. This will mean the imposition of ‘real’ border controls – or, alternatively, the creation of ‘real’ border controls between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.
The EU has also been a major player in the ‘peace process’. It has provided a total of 1.5 billion euros to promote community relations. And shared membership of the EU and a commitment to European “acquis communautaire” were also central to the Good Friday Agreement.
That too has now been thrown into doubt by last week’s Brexit vote. And nothing in the campaigning material issued by ‘Leave’ supporters even attempted to explain how such problems might be dealt with.
Although far from militant in tone, the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is heading in the right direction in response to the result by demanding:
“The politicians who led the Leave campaign, and their business backers, must now be held to account and made to honour their undertakings to increase spending on the NHS and other public services, and to prevent any trade deal with the US along the lines of TTIP.”
“Pledges have been made to preserve the free movement of people, goods and services across the border, that nothing will change and that those who raised concerns were scaremongering. Ms Villiers must prove the doubters wrong.”