Brexit has changed the conversation around a united Ireland, Sinn Fein members of the UK parliament said on Wednesday as the party urged Dublin to prepare for a referendum.
The debate over how the currently invisible border between Northern Ireland — which is part of the UK — and the Republic of Ireland would operate after Brexit has proved the stickiest part of negotiations for Britain to leave the EU.
Sinn Fein’s newly elected Belfast North member of parliament, John Finucane, said that discussion around a border poll was now “mainstream.”
Speaking in London as Sinn Fein’s seven members of parliament met outside the Houses of Parliament in London while lawmakers returned to the legislature, Finucane said that the Brexit vote in 2016 “changed forever the conversation around a new Ireland.”
“It needs to be a very well-informed and reasoned debate, and for that we need the Irish government to step up,” Finucane said.
The UK is due to leave the EU on Jan. 31.
While 52 percent across the UK as a whole voted for the kingdom to leave the EU, within Northern Ireland, 56 percent wanted the UK to stay in the bloc.
Sinn Fein is the biggest party representing the Catholic community in Northern Ireland.
Its members of parliament do not take their seats in the British parliament, as they refuse to recognize its jurisdiction over Northern Ireland or swear allegiance to Britain’s head of state, Queen Elizabeth II.
“We are here to raise the issue of Irish unity,” said West Belfast Member of Parliament Paul Maskey.
The island of Ireland was partitioned in the early 1920s, with six northern counties — then heavily populated by pro-British Protestant unionists — opting to stay within the UK while the rest of Ireland left.
The Irish constitution says a united Ireland can only be brought about with democratically expressed majority consent in both jurisdictions.
British laws say a poll can be called in the province if the government’s Northern Ireland secretary feels it likely that a majority would vote to leave.
Meanwhile, talks are ongoing in Belfast on restoring the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly, which collapsed in January 2017 due to a breakdown in trust.
Northern Ireland has been administered by civil servants since then.
If a deal is not reached by the deadline on Monday, legislation to give civil servants additional powers to run the province’s struggling public services expires and fresh elections are due to be called.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS