IN just his first few weeks in office, Andy Burnham has said that a second Scottish independence referendum is “off limits”.
On the topic of Welsh independence, the Prime Minister said he wasn’t focussed on “constitutional changes like further referendums”.
Then, when asked on a visit to Belfast yesterday about the prospect of a vote on a united Ireland, his answer was unequivocal: the issue was “off the table”.
Burnham argued that the rifts created by referendums can take a long time to heal, pointing to Brexit and Scotland’s 2014 independence vote.
That may be a perfectly understandable political position – but what about the rifts created by denying them?
Indeed, Burnham’s Irish intervention has already demonstrated the problem with trying to do precisely that.
Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald accused him of having no right to rule out a border poll, pointing to the constitutional framework established by the Good Friday Agreement. Under that agreement, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has a duty to call a poll if it appears likely that a majority would vote for Irish unity.
Nick McKerrell, a constitutional law expert, told The National: “The language is clumsy, because if you’re saying it’s off the table, for how long?
“At the time of the Good Friday Agreement being signed, that sort of formulation would not, I would have guessed, been agreed to by the parties who wanted unification of Ireland if they had been told at that time it was off the table.”
He added: “The nature of negotiation is that they came out with a form of words which, I think, satisfied all parties, and I think it is clumsy to get into that language about it if you’re ruling it out forever.”
The Glasgow Caledonian university professor said that using the same language in Scotland and Wales is also “clumsy” but doesn’t have quite the same implications.
That being said, he added: “Just saying it’s off the table is a political position, but in terms of the fact that the law states that the only way they can get an independence referendum in Scotland is if it’s through a Section 30 order, it’s, well, how do you get that?”
McKerrell went on: “I think it is a fair question to ask in Scotland, even in Wales, although Wales is not as pressing as Scotland: what are the circumstances in which you would give a Section 30 order?”
“Scotland has not got a statement like the Good Friday Agreement, but it does have the ruling of the Supreme Court, which doesn’t rule out a referendum. It just says it has to be through the action of a Section 30 order.”
When it was just the one devolved nation clamouring for independence or unification – in this case, Scotland – the same old flat refusal may have worked.
But the dial appears to have shifted, now with three First Ministers wanting to break from the UK.
Denying that reality won’t make the question go away.
