It would be irresponsible to hold any binary constitutional referendums in Ireland or Scotland

What Putin did in 2014 in Crimea was wrong. But it was also wrong for the UK to colonise the Chagos Islands and then deport the local population in Diego Garcia, for the sake of a US naval base.

Furthermore, western democracy is often very divisive. Ukraine, a nation of Christian Slavs, quickly became a nation divided: Orthodox Russian-speakers in the eastern ‘half’, Catholic/Uniate Ukrainian-speakers on the western side. But apart from some Crimean Tatars, they are nearly all ethnic Slavs; and until they started fighting, nearly all Christian.

In the Balkans, “all the wars in the former Yugoslavia started with a referendum,” (Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo’s famous newspaper, 7.2.1999). And in 2014, history repeated itself with binary ‘false-flag’ referendums in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.

In the same year, Scotland also held a binary referendum, and the word ‘Shotlandiya’ (Scotland) was used by Russian separatists to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable: violence.

Given its wretched history abroad, surely it would be irresponsible to hold any binary constitutional referendums in Ireland and/or Scotland, at least for the foreseeable future.

Peter Emerson, Director, de Borda Institute, Russian speaker, and OSCE election observer in Ukraine in six elections, 2004-14. Belfast BT14

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