Does the Republic really want to pay for the impoverished North?
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I think that is the dilemma. Idealogically I believe there is a wish in the south for their country to be unified. But economically, there would be a cost. Then how would the EU react, would they help Ireland by making development funding available to the poor areas in NI? Then there is the question of how long it would take unionists to come to terms with the change.
I suppose you could make the same argument in reverse for unionism, if NI is a financial liability then why is Westminster so anti letting it go?
The government, Johnson especially, only cares about the will of the people if it happens to align with their own agenda.
The last poll put support for a united Ireland at about 30% in the North.
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yet they voted significantly in favour of remaining in the EU :scratches head:
I realise the NIP has placed NI in a unique position (and the DUP want it scrapped - go figure!) but their FOM ability remains as it is on the mainland - dire - and when push comes to shove, opinions might change.
It worked for Germany. Cost an arm but it worked.
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East Germany was a much larger nation then the province of NI and there was a much greater social and industrial disparity between the two Germanys. By contrast, NI is a comparatively small colonial anomaly and economic liability that Iâm sure successive UK governments wouldnât have missed apart from the Unionistâs occasional support in Westminster.
I suspect that with EU support the six counties would flourish if they were again part of the EU and freed from the liability of being second class and often despised citizens of the UK. It wonât happen overnight, but change will come.
I think thereâs a better chance of it working in Ireland because the gulf between the two former Germanys is greater than the religious divide in the North, because now there are so many more than a decade ago who donât share that religious sectarian polarisation.
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The re-unification argument is quite a complex affair made more so by the NIP, and Donaldson needs to be cautious about the DUPs approach to attempting to twist the Tory arm over it.
Phil Moorhouse has a good explanatory video about how/when an Irish Border plan could be consideredâŠ
Not clear how the NIP makes it more complex.
Is there a âbest of both worldsâ argument in favour of the North being economically in the EU but politically in the UK? @John_Scully ?
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On the UKâs embarrassment of a government, I wonder what folks here made of the UK local election results?
On one level good to see the Tories get a beating, of course - and the relentless long-term rise of the Greens continuing - but little evidence that Labour can beat the Tories in a General Election. Labourâs share of the votes was actually down on the last time these seats were contested, in 2018 - and Labour went on to lose the general election the following year (albeit distorted by being dominated by brexit).
No doubt Labour did collect some Tory defectors - but lost even more on its left flank to the Greens, abstentions, etc.
This is why, I guess, there is talk of an Autumn election - Johnson would probably win on this evidence.
Totally Geof, it is a wonderful opportunity. Which more and more people in Ni are realising.
Oh the joys of smuggling. Slab Murphy, were he not in his grave, would be rubbing his mitts so he would.
Edited because Mr Murphy isnât dead, oops.
Isnât that what we had pre-Brexit. I recall that it worked pretty well.
In a word Jane, no, over ÂŁ4B PA just to keep the show on the road 
.
Luckily the âA Nation Once Againâ crowd in the South are dying off and people under forty are EU centric and not interested in fighting last centuries battles or navel gazing in their own back yard. They have lives to live and the World is their oyster, not the Ardoyne.
The risk in the South is that there is a housing crisis, a public healthcare crisis, a public transport crisis, etc. etc. which in a wealthy little Country can really only be blamed on poor administration (since 1921 
). So the clowns in power could cause a move to SF.
The Shinners, who are populist, untried and will undoubtably be as, if not more, incompetent than their predecessors, may woo younger voters (who donât know them for what they are) with unrealistic quick fix promises to the above issues to gain power. Then they will bang on again about unification.
With the Shinners in power North and South things could get very messy.
Absolutely. Before Ireland joined the EEC it was a poverty ridden backwater run by the Catholic Church and the North was a gerrymandered sectarian civil rights disaster. With the support of the EEC both communities moved forward.
It was my hope from the start that the wider horizons would cause everyone across the Island to see themselves as Europeans first and temper the regional differences.
Then that bastard Johnson came along.
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But EU membership did make that difference John. I remember soon after the Good Friday Agreement asking some Northern Irish colleagues what had made it possible - and they all answered without hesitation: the EU.
While Fintan OâTool can go a bit overboard at times, I can vouch that his article below actually makes sense.
Yes I read that earlier John. I liked:
As for a united Ireland, only a fool would think itâs coming soon â and only a bigger fool would think that it has not, in some form, come closer.
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I see the knives are out for Starmer even from his own side -
It is difficult to see why Durham police would issue fines to Starmer and Rayner but if the worst did happen the fallout for both Labour and the Tories would be huge. The Met havenât finished their investigations yet and I expect more fines for Johnson so given Starmerâs resignation stance the pressure on him (Johnson) to go would be unrelenting.
It seems to me that that is what NI currently has, but it is not good enough for them. They want to be politically in the UK and economically in both the UK and the EU with no border either side.
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