Thought the following comments by Peter Kyle, shadow NI Secretary for the BLP were fairly innocuous. But no. Apparently not.
Northern Ireland unionists have expressed alarm after the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Kyle, said he would be prepared to call a referendum on Irish unity if certain conditions were met.
Kyle would set out the criteria for calling a border poll if Labour were in power, he told the BBC's Sunday Politics show at his party's conference.
"If the circumstances emerge as set out in the Good Friday agreement, I as secretary of state, would not play games. I would call the border poll," he said. "I am saying I am not going to be a barrier if the circumstances emerge."
As the Guardian notes:
Under the 1998 agreement, a secretary of state must call a referendum if it appears likely a majority of those voting would want the region to leave the UK – but the agreement does not specify the criteria, a vagueness that the UK government and unionists have been keen to maintain.
And note that:
The Irish government, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) have pushed for clarity on the criteria, which would lay out the steps needed for a vote that could abolish the state of
Northern Ireland and unify the island.
Kyle's position was in a sense both a restatement of the status quo and a statement of the obvious:
Kyle said Sinn Féin's emergence as the biggest party in Northern Ireland and last week's census results, which showed
Catholics outnumbering Protestants, did not suffice. "We're not even in that circumstance yet, so when we move towards the point where those circumstances set out in the Good Friday agreement start to emerge and it becomes a priority for the people of Northern Ireland, I will act," he said.
As indeed he should.
But consider the response from parts of unionism.
On Monday the Ulster Unionist party (UUP) leader, Doug Beattie, criticised the comments as an "unhelpful and ill-timed" distraction from the cost of living crisis and other problems facing Northern Ireland.
The pro-union Belfast News Letter newspaper said the Labour politician had muddied the waters on a border poll and that it was essential any UK government kept wide discretion. It said: "It is unfortunate that Mr Kyle has chosen this time to give succour to those who want to shatter the UK."
Beattie's contribution is curious. There is currently and has been since Brexit considerable interest in this topic. Was the shadow Secretary not to speak on this? Is that somehow forbidden? Would his stature or credibility be enhanced by refusing to do so? That makes not a whit of sense.
As to the News Letter. Well, it is entirely reasonable given the GFA/BA for unification of the island as a political entity to be pursued as determinedly within constitutional politics, as is the case for those who seek to maintain the union. So it's dispiriting to see a media outlet pretend that it is otherwise or that those trying to clarify aspects of the GFA/BA dispensation are somehow unreasonable in attempting to do so.
Indeed a bit of clarity around all these issues would be of considerable benefit.
No comments:
Post a Comment