Search

Working towards Irish Unity

Subscribe

Opinion

UK-EU-protocol

Brexit and the Protocol: Bad for the Union – Good for Irish Unity?

Watch this online Irish Border Poll discussion with speakers Kevin Meagher, Ben Collins and Brian Feeney recorded on Thursday 2nd March.

How should we view the new UK-EU Protocol deal?

Will it lead to NI becoming economically semi-detached from GB with a border in the Irish Sea and the North becoming more closely linked economically to the Republic? Now that the British Supreme Court ruled the Protocol legal and declared aspects of the Union subjugated can anyone realistically claim the North is as British as Finchley?

Is it accurate to say the Protocol does not change the constitutional status of NI? That it simply gives NI the best of both worlds which is access to both EU and UK markets? Does the new deal in fact give unionists most of what they wanted?

 Or, is News Letter editor Ben Lowry correct to argue the Protocol “inflicts constitutional harm” on the Union? If so, does it edge us closer to an economic United Ireland? Paradoxically might it be less the Protocol but hardline unionism’s failure to embrace the Protocol opportunity and its counterproductive campaign against it that is accelerating the moves towards Irish unity in political terms?

Join us for this irishborderpoll.com debate as we assess potential consequences, winners and losers of Brexit and the Protocol We will also assess whether the Protocol is best viewed through the prism of trade, business and economics? Or equally, if not more as about sovereignty and constitutional future of the Union and Irish Unity?

Speakers 

Kevin Meagher
author, A United Ireland: Why Unification Is Inevitability and How It Will Come About

Ben Collins
author, Irish Unity: Time to Prepare

Brian Feeney
Ireland’s Future board member

Online debate, 6.45-8.00pm, Thursday 2nd March