In the latter stages of the UK’s EU referendum campaign, the so-called Scottish question loomed large. What would happen if, say, Scotland voted strongly to remain in the European Union, while the rest of the UK voted to leave? Having rejected independence two years before, would the devolved Scottish government demand a new referendum that could produce a landslide for going it alone – and remaining in, or rejoining, the European Union?

       As it turned out, that focus on Scotland was misguided – born perhaps of a human tendency to look back rather than ahead. Scotland did indeed vote differently from England, with a 63-38 per cent majority for remaining, compared with a 53-47 majority for leave in England and the 52-48 Brexit vote across the UK as a whole. But while there was much grumbling from Edinburgh, there was no immediate pressure for a second referendum on independence. The real difficulties centre on Northern Ireland.

       Like Scotland, Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. But the subsequent complexities derive not only from the vote, but from the fact that Northern Ireland has a land border – the UK’s only land border – with a country, the Republic of Ireland, that is a staunch member of the EU. Nor is it a border that can simply be reinstated as it was before both the UK and the Republic of Ireland joined the EU. It is a border that is itself problematical.

       Ireland was divided – partitioned - in 1921, after a war of independence that precipitated a civil war. Six northern counties remained as part of the United Kingdom, with the rest becoming the Republic of Ireland. The shadow of history hung heavy ever after, and relations between the two parts of Ireland and between Dublin and London veered from hostile to cool - until comparatively recently.

       Brexit, Once Again: Wandering in a Maze Alexander Rahr

       After Brexit, Theresa May wants to retain all the privileges England had in the era of EU membership. But the EU understands that it would mean its further collapse, because if a country that quits the union could in fact retain about 80% of its membership privileges not paying its coffers – this is nonsense, since it undermines the union’s foundations.

       The Republic was predominantly Roman Catholic, while in the north Protestants held sway. The North owed allegiance to the British Crown, while the Republic was – fiercely – republican. The Republic remained neutral throughout the Second World War – a defining chapter that the UK regards still as its finest hour. The so-called “Troubles” – 30 years of civil unrest from the late 1960s – were both a struggle by Catholics for equal rights and an echo of the unresolved civil war.

       EU membership for both countries (1973), the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and the Queen’s state visit to the Republic in 2011 chart a slow normalisation of relations, with issues of the border and citizenship eventually blurred. For the past 20 years, the border between the UK and Ireland has come to exist more in the mind than on the ground. A long-standing Common Travel Area provided for passport-free travel, while the EU Single Market facilitated the free movement of goods. Today, the only way to know you have crossed from one part of Ireland to the other is a signboard announcing the new county and distances stated in miles, rather than kilometres.

       With Brexit, that EU framework that facilitated free movement of goods will come to an end. Both sides say the CTA will continue, but with migration a big consideration in the UK’s pro-Brexit vote, gree movement of people may have to be formalised, too, lest the Ireland-UK land border be seen as weak point in the UK’s security.

       What to do about the border is now THE big obstacle to an amicable divorce between the UK and the EU. Unless Northern Ireland obtains some special status that allows it to be somehow half in and half out of the EU, with EU regulations pertaining there, but not in the rest of the UK, there will have to be some kind of customs border dividing Northern Ireland from the Republic. The Good Friday Agreement – which brought peace, if not reconciliation to Northern Ireland - depends to a large extent on that border fading away. Any change threatens the efficacy of that agreement, too. Rioting in the province’s two main cities - Belfast and Derry/Londonderry - this summer was a reminder of what that could mean.

       I recently visited Derry-Londonderry – the double name reflecting the city’s divided population – to try to gauge something of the mood, as the time for concluding a Brexit agreement starts to run short. What I found was widespread despondency, verging on despair Neither Protestants nor Catholics can see any realistic possibility of retaining the open border with the Republic, and there are multiple fears about what that could mean – from economic neglect, fewer jobs, zero outside investment to a resurgence of violence if intercommunal tensions sharpen.

       Could Brexit be Defeated? David Lane

       Currently, the real political argument is over the terms of negotiation and here rest possibilities for maintaining many of the EU linkages. For those opposing Brexit, the most practical political course would be to accept a place outside the EU but to preserve many of the existing agreements with the EU.

       Perversely, perhaps, this has led to the reopening – still tentative in the extreme – of a discussion that was until very recently taboo: about the possibility of unification with the Republic. It is hard, though not impossible, to see anything like this happening soon – though a referendum on the subject was provided for under the Good Friday Agreement. And the Dublin government could well have qualms of its own about re-uniting with six counties that would initially at least be an economic liability and include a militantly Protestant and pro-British minority.

       But the prospect is not as unthinkable as it once was. There has been something of a rapprochement – including at a personal level in the border areas - over the 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement. There has also been change in both parts of Ireland. In the Republic, the power of the Church has sharply diminished, and the social climate is now at least as liberal as in much of the UK. It is Northern Ireland, where same-sex marriage and abortion are not permitted, that is left as the conservative stand-out.

       The rigid alignment between religion and politics in the north also seems to have softened a little. Time was when demography was closely tracked for the point at which Catholics – with their higher birth-rate - would outnumber Protestants. That point has not (quite) been reached. Yet in the UK general election (2017), Protestant parties won fewer seats than the combination of others. And although the EU referendum campaign was fought largely along Protestant and Catholic lines, with Protestants supporting Brexit, the 56 – 44 per cent victory for Remain in Northern Ireland means that quite a number of Protestants, too, must have voted Remain.

       It is regrettable, perhaps, that these changes – which are of huge significance for the future of both parts of Ireland – have been obscured to a degree by the fall-out from the UK’s 2017 general election. Faced with losing a governing majority, Theresa May, secured the support of MPs from the (Protestant) Democratic Unionist Party. Strongly pro-Brexit, the DUP now has leverage not just in Parliament, but over the Brexit negotiations, which far exceeds their support in Northern Ireland.

       Any change in the status of Northern Ireland is, of course, fiercely opposed by the DUP – and by the UK’s Conservative government. That the question of Irish unity is now being discussed in the North, however tentatively – and not just whether it might happen, but how is a byproduct of Brexit that went unmentioned during the EU referendum campaign and was only occasionally glanced at in the months immediately after.

       After visiting Northern Ireland, however briefly, I would not exclude such an eventuality in the long term, or even, extraordinary though it might seem, somewhat sooner. Brexit was always going to change the configuration of the EU. What appears not to have been considered – on either side of the Channel - was that it might change the configuration of the UK, too. Or that, if it did, then the change would start with Scotland. In the event, we may be looking at the twilight of Northern Ireland as a province of the UK and the dawn of a united Ireland.

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.