“There will not be a border poll for a very long time to come”
The words of one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom… and some other parts. Now let those words sink in. What you just read was Boris Johnson tearing an integral part of the Good Friday Agreement to pieces, and tossing it to the wind. Boris Johnson, through his responsibilities, is also a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement which is an integral, nay, essential part of the very fragile peace in the North Eastern six.
The problem with the aforementioned quote from BoJo, is that it is entirely and unequivocally false. It is a lie. We could legally have a border poll next week if the Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis, was carrying out his duties “with rigorous impartiality” as he should be doing under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. With figures released today showing only 40% of those questioned in a poll, think the formation of ‘Northern Ireland’ should be celebrated and 48% agreeing with the statement – “The partition of Ireland and the creation of a land border 100 years ago was a negative development which should be regretted”, one would think Brandon Lewis would be sitting up and taking note.
What we’re witnessing in the initial quote, simply put, is Boris Johnson lying again. I say “lying again” because Boris Johnson has a history of telling more than white lies. He has quite literally lied his way through every single post he has held. From his time as a columnist at The Times through his time as MP for Henly, through his two terms as Mayor of London, through his posting as Foreign Secretary, through to his current position as Prime Minister…and still it continues. He has lied his entire way through his career to the extent he has been labelled a ‘pathological liar’ by some experts.
From being fired from The Times, for inventing a quote, to lying about Turkey joining the EU, Boris had lied and lied again. BoJo was on the group of the campaign committee of Vote Leave. A common ‘Vote Leave’ campaign poster, which wouldn’t have been seen so much in the North of Ireland, but most definitely in England, said “Turkey (population 76m) is joining the EU”. Boris Johnson himself wrote to David Cameron to say – “The public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote leave and take back control on 23 June”. While there has been whispers of Turkey joining the EU for decades, it is very unlikely to join any time soon. The silliness in this specific example is that as an EU member, the UK would have been able to veto Turkish membership if it ever did get close to joining the EU.
Not surprisingly, a single two-minute video of Boris lying about the government’s record on emissions, economic growth, nursing bursaries, hospital car parking, NHS spending, the Covid track and trace and poverty in the UK, has led to six opposition parties in the Commons urging the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to allow a vote on an inquiry into Boris Johnson’s “consistent failure to be honest” in statements to MPs.
In the end, I wouldn’t believe a single word that leaves Boris Johnson’s lips. The Good Friday Agreement enshrines an explicit provision for holding a ‘Northern Ireland’ border poll and so was made in UK law. The Northern Ireland Act 1998 states that “if at any time it appears likely to him (SoS Brandon Lewis) that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, the Secretary of State shall make an Order in Council enabling a border poll. Don’t listen to Boris Johnson. Simply put, he doesn’t have the power, even as Prime Minister, to deny the North a border poll. We must simply ensure Brandon Lewis is held to account, and carries out his responsibilities to afford us our right to a border poll which realistically, will be in the near future.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” – Martin Luther King Jr.
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