Brexit reveals hazard of tight referendum majorities, says EU-exit campaigner

A united Ireland referendum should require the support of a super-majority of voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic, Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker has recommended, citing lessons from the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum.

A leading figure in the 2016 UK pro-Brexit campaign and one who pushed for the hardest form of EU exit afterwards, Mr Baker said he regretted now that a 60 per cent vote to leave the European Union had not been required.

Raising the need for a super-majority vote in a united Ireland referendum set against his own Brexit experiences, Mr Baker said: “Would anyone here seriously want a 50 per cent plus-one united Ireland result in Northern Ireland? I speak personally,” he told the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly.

“I deliberately say it like that because some of you I know would [want a 50+1 result]. But just reflect on the trouble we had from running a 50 per cent plus-one referendum in the United Kingdom,” he told the gathering, during the first of a two-day meeting in Kildare.

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The Brexit referendum would not have passed with a super-majority and, consequently, the UK would not have left the European Union, he believed. However, a super-majority victory, if that had happened, would have meant that it would have been accepted by everyone.

“One regret is it probably should have been a super-majority. That’s a huge thing for me to say because if it had been a super-majority, we’d have lost and we’d still be in. If we’d had to have 60 per cent, everybody would have abided by the result,” said Mr Baker.

“It’s inconceivable if it had been a 60-40 result that we would have had all of the political difficulty which followed from members of parliament, in particular refusing to accept the result,” said Mr Baker, accepting that the UK had not “properly prepared” for some of the consequences of Brexit.

Saying that he was speaking in a personal capacity, Mr Baker added he believed that then Conservative party leader David Cameron had never wanted to hold a referendum on the UK’s European Union membership.

“I personally believe that the Conservative party leadership [in 2015] intended to bargain away the EU referendum in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I have reason to think that they were devastated when we weren’t in coalition. Not least because it meant they had to hold the referendum,” he said.

Consequently, British prime minister David Cameron held “the referendum absolutely as quickly as possible in the hope that Remain would just quickly win and it would be out of the way”, but that had consequences because we “couldn’t be properly prepared” for the effects on the island of Ireland, he said.

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He had worked with Conservative colleagues to examine the Irish issues, but they did not have the customs experience necessary “to come up with concrete solutions”. However, he had frequently faced the refrain that “it was just too large an issue”.

The Remain campaign had raised the risks Brexit posed for Northern Ireland, but had no impact “whatsoever”, he said, “I actually asked one of their number, ‘why didn’t you raise it in the in the campaign?’ And the reply came, ‘we did. No one cared.’ That’s a tragic reflection.”

Though Mr Baker’s remarks about Irish unification were set against the lessons he had learned from the Brexit referendum, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the Good Friday Agreement [Belfast Agreement] lays down that a majority on both sides of the Border is needed for unification, but no more.

“The principle of consent is the bedrock on which the Good Friday Agreement is built. It provides the basis for parity of esteem for nationalists, unionists and all those who have a stake in our constitutional future,” he said.

However, added: “There will be no super-majority requirement for change because unionist votes cannot be worth more than anyone else’s. If a simple majority is the requirement to remain in the UK, then a simple majority is what will be needed to unite our island. There’ll be no changing the goalposts now.”

Last night, an NIO spokesperson said the 1998 agreement is clear that any change to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would require the consent of a majority, and it will remain part of the UK ‘for as long as its people wish for it to be.

”We are absolutely clear that there is no basis to suggest that a majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to separate from the United Kingdom,” said the spokesperson.