Editorial: A deeply unhelpful blunder by a Northern Ireland Office minister on the criteria for a border poll

​​The Northern Ireland Office has made clear that the criteria for calling a border poll has not changed.​

This is important clarification after a junior NIO minister said that the national government would use opinion polls to decide whether to hold a plebiscite on the province staying in the UK.

Fleur Anderson MP told the Agenda NI magazine that the criteria used by the NIO to decide whether a border poll should be called “would be based on opinion polls”. Regrettably, she also declined to say if she would campaign in favour of maintaining the Union in the event of a border poll. She said: “If it ever came to a vote, we would support the democratic process.”

In one sense this is a minor blunder. After all, junior ministers often go from government role to role, and can miss the nuance in particular departments. In another sense, it is yet another dismaying victory for republicans. Ministers in the NIO should be fully cognisant of, indeed absorbed in, the fact that Northern Ireland’s place in the UK is in peril. It is particularly so with regard to a border poll. Note that if one border poll is held, another one is likely within seven years (the Belfast Agreement says that it cannot be held more than every seven years, so a repeat is not required but republicans, and their new found influential friends such as Leo Varadkar, would ensure that it was held repeatedly, unless the first poll was overwhelmingly pro UK).

Almost the only power the UK has to prevent such an outcome is complete discretion as to whether or not to hold an poll. Republicans and their helpers have been trying to tie London down to specific criteria but it has been right to resist that.

Thank goodness it has made clear that the Belfast Agreement gives all the instruction that is needed on the matter, and that it will not be committed to interpreting sometimes dubious poll data in a way that those who want to shatter the UK demand.