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Sinn Féin calls for vote on Irish reunification if UK backs Brexit Sinn Féin calls for vote on Irish reunification if UK backs Brexit
(about 9 hours later)
A vote on Irish reunification should be held if Britain votes to leave the EU, Martin McGuinness has said. Britain’s departure from the EU should lead to a border poll on a United Ireland, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness, has said.
The Sinn Féin deputy first minister said Brexit would be against the wishes of the Irish people. “Such a negative development would represent a political and economic game-changer,” he added. The former IRA chief-of-staff said that if Britain votes to leave the EU then there is a “democratic imperative” to allow people on the island of Ireland to vote on reunification.
The Democratic Unionists are the only large party in Northern Ireland to campaign for Brexit in the June referendum. Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionists and the nationalist SDLP are campaigning to stay in the union. He said: “If Britain votes to leave the European Union then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people,” the Sinn Féin leader said.
McGuinness added: “Ireland’s place, north and south, is in Europe and leading change in Europe. If Britain votes to leave the European Union then that could have huge implications for the entire island of Ireland and, given all the predictions, would run counter to the democratic wishes of the Irish people. McGuinness said the electorate should have the right to vote to “retain a role in the EU.”
“If there is a vote in Britain to leave the EU, there is a democratic imperative to provide Irish citizens with the right to vote in a border poll to end partition and retain a role in the EU.” The largest unionist force in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist party, is backing the campaign to leave the EU. However, the Ulster Unionist party’s ruling executive voted last week to support David Cameron’s calls for a vote to remain in the EU in the June referendum.
He said the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which ended decades of the Troubles, provided for a border poll to be conducted. Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers has joined the campaign in favour of leaving the EU.
“I have proposed to Theresa Villiers [the Northern Ireland secretary] that, given the enormous significance of these issues, the British government now give a firm commitment to an immediate border poll in the event Britain votes to leave the European Union.” A border poll is highly unlikely to be granted by London even if the UK leaves the EU after the referendum. Yet even if one was held, successive opinion polls in Northern Ireland have shown a substantial majority in the region favour remaining within the UK.
Dissident republican critics of Martin McGuinness have pointed out that any border poll would only be held within the confines of Northern Ireland, which they regard as an “artificial” or “partitionist” entity created out of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.
The dissidents and in particular the 1916 Societies have launched an island wide petition demanding that any border poll be held in both the Republic and Northern Ireland.
This runs counter to the key principles within the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, an internationally recognised treaty that ensures any vote on constitutional change is only held within Northern Ireland.