Northern Ireland shows the only way out of UK Union

The National

23-04-2025

While it's customary for everyone to avoid mixing politics between Scotland and Northern Ireland, Brexit and the ongoing constitutional question have brought the question of consent to the fore in both places. Specifically, on how, if a majority of people in both Scotland and Northern Ireland wish to leave the UK, those wishes will be given democratic effect.
I've written before about how the 1998 Good Friday Agreement establishes some fundamental principles on Northern Ireland's constitutional future.
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Firstly, in terms of how it recognises in law and international treaty that it is for the people of Ireland alone to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of consent. And secondly, on how the agreement commits the UK Government to organise a referendum if at any time it appears likely that a majority of those voting in Northern Ireland would express a wish that it should cease to be part of the United Kingdom.
Most Scots regard our place in the Union as being similarly based on consent. But while we have the precedents of two devolution votes and one independence referendum to go on, as well as our deeply cherished outlook that the people are sovereign, as things stand, it is only Northern Ireland which has this right and pathway explicitly set out in law.
No doubt there are some out there who would describe calling for a similar set of ground rules for Scotland to be in some way 'bending the knee', representing a sell-out of their rather singular view of what Scottish sovereignty can mean in practice.
However, the fact remains that the only way out of the Union is through consent, and Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where that process is currently codified.
Obviously, there are a few gaps in that commitment, such as the lack of detail about how and when a UK Government might assess that a likely majority for a united Ireland had emerged.
Naturally, all attempts to get an answer to that from ministers up until now have led to much the same kind of evasive, diversionary waffle as you get when asking the same sort of question about Scotland.
You might – if you were being kind – refer to the UK Government's reluctance to answer those questions clearly as being an act of deliberate 'strategic ambiguity'. In Northern Ireland's case, though, there's not much left for any UK Government to be strategically ambiguous about, since the agreement also makes clear that a simple majority of those voting would be sufficient to decide the outcome.
So, after a week when one Scottish opinion pollster put independence support at 56%, let's all raise a glass to the unlikely figure of Northern Ireland minister Fleur Anderson. In an illuminating interview for agendaNi magazine, the minister has done us all a huge service by confirming that so far as the UK Government is concerned, the criteria for holding any future Irish border poll would 'be based on opinion polls.'
Presumably, it won't be judged on the basis of just one opinion poll, or even the consistent polling from just one pollster. However, if a range of reputable pollsters are regularly returning data showing a clear majority for leaving the UK over an extended period, we now have it clarified that this is what the UK Government will regard as being a tipping point for holding any such poll.
The late Labour leader John Smith used to describe Scottish devolution as being 'unfinished business', calling it the 'settled will' of the Scottish people. But while that was true back then, it's been clear for so long as there's been a Scottish Parliament that the new settled will of Scots is that the status of that Scottish Parliament itself remains unfinished business.
So, how do we finish that business? Sadly, there's no magic button out there which can be pushed to 'dissolve the Union' or 'get indy done'. As I've said before in these pages, challenging the Westminster parties to concede the principle of consent in letting Scotland determine its own democratic future points the way. But for that to have any meaning, we also need to build support for independence so that we have sufficient numbers of Scottish voters consistently backing it.
Polling suggests that independence-supporting parties will have a big majority at next year's Holyrood elections. While the only circumstance which has exerted enough pressure to date has been the 2011 single-party majority for the SNP (only achieved through a solid 'SNP one and two' showing), those pro-indy politicians who are elected will need to be mandated on the basis of upholding Scotland's right to choose, and on their willingness to work to increase and solidify current popular support for independence.
In that, we might find ourselves being helped greatly by the choices that are being made by an alarming number of voters in England. The Faragists might be a joke of a party led by a joke of a politician, but as they rise in the polls, it's a joke no-one is laughing at any more.
We can challenge the rise of the far-right within Scotland through political leadership.
But if we want to be as free as we ever can be of the bad choices being made south of the Border, we need to be persuading more Scots to start actively choosing the independence path for themselves.