The Irish protocol.

Pity somebody wouldn't ask the UK Attorney General about that or even take a court case about it. Oh wait!

And you cannot have it two ways, as you usually do...insist the international border is the land border then claim that a trade border splits the UK.

The trade border is in the Irish Sea for expediency. That you are not important enough to the British does not mean the UK has been split.

UK still shopping around to try and find a legal opinion that says they are right. Should just give Jamie Bryson a job.

An Irish Sea border is not the same as an Irish land border in substance, in impact or in historical significance. But, despite those differences, I do accept that the unionist community is offended by a sea border in the same way that the nationalist community is offended by a land border. The two things may not be quite the same, but people feel the same way about them. And those feelings are valid.

So, should we have a referendum to choose which border to have?

Absolutely not.

And here's why:

We've already had a referendum, from which we know that NI doesn't want Brexit on any terms. A "which border?" referendum essentially says to the people of Northern Ireland: "Here's a stick. We already know you don't want either end of the stick - you've already told us that. So we've now gone out of our way to make both ends of the stick shîttier than they need to be. Which shîtty end would you like?".

In practical terms, it's hard to see that approaching the problem is this way is likely to lead to a solution which, um, can secure cross-community assent. The only thing likely to secure cross-community agreement is how outrageous, how contemptuous, the question is.

As a matter of principle, if the GFA gives autonomy to the people of NI to decide their own future, how can we justify posing a referendum question that rules out the possibility of them deciding that they don't want a hard border?

The only reason for posing the question in this form is that the Tory party, with precisely zero elected representatives in NI at any level, wants a hard border. The hard border is being foisted on NI against its expressed wishes and interests because the British Tory party thinks that by doing this it can obtain political advantage in England. Given that we accept that hard borders are inflammatory, the Tories are inflaming Northern Ireland - first, by forcing a hard border on it and, secondly, by stirring up discontent over the hard border that they have imposed - as a tactic to secure partisan political benefits for themselves in England. This is shameful. There is no other word for it.

Even to propose this referendum as a solution reinforces the criticism that I made earlier of contemporary unionism. To suggest this referendum is to accept that the parameters within which this problem must be addressed rule out expecting the Tory government to attach any weight at all to the wishes or interests of NI, or to value the health of the Union above short-term partisan gains in England, or to behave with a modicum of decency and democratic accountability. It presumes that the Tories' shameful behaviour must be assented to, acquiesced in, even tacitly supported.

Obviously that frames the problem in way that can never win the support of the nationalist community. But it ought never to win the support of the unionist community either. What is the value of a union in which Northern Ireland is despised and disdained in this way? Why are unionists so afraid to demand a union in which NI is is not alternately ignored and exploited for electoral advantage in real Britain? What self-respecting unionist could be complicit in maintaining so dysfunctional and abusive a union? Unionists deserve better.

NI was invited to vote on Brexit with no terms specified, and a wide variety of terms promised. You could vote for that to signal support for Brexit on any terms you thought desirable and attainable. A clear majority voted against. With every possible Brexit on offer, a clear majority chose "Remain". There's only one way to interpret that.

As for me supporting a black-and-white position of "it's the protocol or nothing", this is precisely the opposite of what I am saying. It's Westminster that decided that "it's the Protocol or nothing", having rejected all other forms of Brexit that were offered or available. I have consistently been highly critical of that position; I think they should have chosen a form of Brexit that didn't require either an Irish Sea border or an Irish land border. That's still what I think they should be aiming for.

That's also what I think unionists should have demanded from the outset, and what they should still be demanding, and if they had any self-confidence and any self-respect that is what they would be demanding. As it is, they find themselves unable to make any demand that might displease the Tory right-wing.

To paraphrase the Brexit government in their attempt to break international law, It splits the UK in a 'specific and limited way' so shouldn't be a problem.

The reality however is that with the protocol NI doesn't necessarily become part of a UI. The method of becoming a UI still doesn't change, it's still consent. In consent the difference will be made by the new middle ground and they will only be convinced by liberal, moderate unionists like Doug Beattie that the union is the way to go forward.

The whole anti-protocol drive by extreme unionism is an absolute waste of time and possibly counter-intuitive.

Not to remind you of the basic facts of history, downcow, but Cameron was a prominent Remainer. The statements of Remainers don't serve to establish what the Leave campaign was offering; the winners in that referendum were never bound or understood to be bound to behave as their opponents predicted they would. To see what the Leave campaign was offering people, to see what people who voted "Leave" understood themselves to be voting for, you need to look at what Leave campaigners said, not at what Remain campaigners said.

And Leave campaigners said everything. Gove may have said that the UK should be outside the Single Market, but others said that either in or out was possible, and still others treated Leave as consistent with SM membership. I'm old enough to remember that, even after the referendum, there were Brexiter Tory MPs complaining that if the EU excluded the UK from the Single Market, that would be the EU punishing the UK for Brexiting. They clearly thought, at the time of the referendum and after, that a Leave vote was a vote to remain in the SM. This was a deliberate strategy. There were even two quite distinct Leave campaigns to ensure maximum mixed messaging, to promise all things to all men, to hoover up every vote for any kind Brexit that might be implemented on any terms and put them all into the one "Leave" basket. That's how they got across the line. And that's how we can take it that the people who voted Remain were people who didn't want to Brexit on any of the wide variety of terms promised by the Leave campaigns.

As for it being a UK-wide referendum — yes. That's the point. I'm not the one who's carving up regions here and giving them different treatment - that was the British government's decision - not mine, not Ireland's, not the EU's. A UK-wide referendum demands a UK-wide Brexit; you can't reasonably argue that a UK-wide referendum give a mandate for a form of Brexit chosen because it's thought to be popular in England, and damn the rest. It demand a Brexit that factors in the needs, wishes, interests of all parts of the UK - including, if you take the Union seriously, NI. Unionist leaders should have demanded that, and they should still be demanding that. That means Brexit on terms that don't require a land border on one side of NI or a sea border on the other.

Quite interesting and predictable that there are certain posters insisting there has been no change in northern Ireland in 100 years.

You'd never guess that as well as being in turmoil over the mess they made of Brexit and the self separating they have achieved they are also in turmoil about what to do if they lose their (in name only -that is how fragile it is) First Minister position.

Gas stuff!

Are you really waiting to be convinced Downcow ? You should have said !

oh, and many of the “people of Northern Ireland” are already convinced. Once again, you conflate Unionist people with all the people of NI..

I'm fine with the moderate nationalism to convince unionists of UI etc. That's ok.

Also ok is that polls show preference to remain with UK. Very happy to accept that, so married am I to the principle of consent.

The reason to suggest Doug Beattie and liberal unionists need to convince people in the middle to remain with the UK is borne of the fact that unionists clearly don't believe such concrete preferences can survive the protocol, hence all unionist parties calling for it to be scrapped. If you are so confident that NI wants its future to be with GB, why all the issues with the protocol?