Sir
Stephen Collins dismisses those who would raise the possibility of a reunited Ireland as reckless twaddle-talkers (‘Stop the dangerous guff about a united Ireland’, 1 November 2019). Perhaps I could direct his attention to the words of Professor Colin Harvey of the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast, in my book Laying It On The Line: the Border and Brexit, to be be published by Mercier Press later this month:
“Talking about a border poll is absolutely not to deepen division and I resent the way in which this whole debate has been framed…The constitutional status of this place [Northern Ireland] is supposed to be based on consent and on a democratic principle, and everybody is supposed to have accepted that. So what is the problem with raising that [ a border poll] as an issue? If that is a divisive point to make, then you pull away one of the central pillars of the constitutional compromise that is the Good Friday Agreement.”
I suspect I’m not alone in believing that Professor Harvey isn’t the one talking guff.
Yours etc
Jude Collins
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