How a hard Brexit could endanger Northern Ireland's fragile peace process.

The prospect of border controls with the Republic could give succour to dissident republicans.

Northern Ireland, along with Scotland and London, was one of the three regions that voted to Remain in the EU back in June. Some 56% of voters across the province cast a ballot to stay.

That such an emphatic vote on a cross-community basis could be achieved in Northern Ireland – which is still a deeply politically divided and, at times, sectarian society – is nothing short of a miracle. (Welsh voters did what Wales has always done since 1284AD and willingly tagged their destiny to that of their English cousins.)

The last occasion there was such unanimity in Northern Ireland was for the peace accord known as the Good Friday Agreement.

However, since those heady days in 1998 (when Tony Blair intoned he felt 'the hand of history on our shoulder'), Northern Ireland politics have moved to the extremes of both nationalism and unionism. Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party are now very much in control.


By Tom Kelly.
Full story at IB Times.