We cannot have a border poll in Northern Ireland before matters such as the current trading chaos are resolved

This talk of border poll yesterday is getting out of control, and is premature.

I filled in the Lucid Talk poll last week. I am fairly middle-of-the road anyway, as you would probably expect as an Alliance voter, but I still wondered if the questions were weighted towards an outcome and I was being steered towards the middle range.

Perhaps that is unfair, but sometimes one feels that the pollsters and the media feed off each other.

The talk of a border poll seems to be inspired by the term ‘Irish Sea Border’ which is being used in a non-conciliatory way now. I would have preferred the term Extra Regulatory Checks (ERC) but the genie seems to be out of the bottle now with the media, let alone the politicians for their own ends.

Any border poll should not be based on economic chaos. It should be based on consensus. Consent is technically enough but consensus is a great deal better and sustainable. Voting needs to be done with hearts as well as heads.

Another 20 years would be required for this consensus. I am no expert on the polls but I can only convey how I felt when filling it in. I do have a continued respect for the work that they do, both Lucid Talk and the Life and Times Survey.

Support for a united Ireland is actually down in the latest Lucid Talk poll but support for a border poll up. Some of this is born out of the current chaos.

If this was projected into a border vote with a narrow result to stay in the UK then we would be in another Brexit-type situation. There would be a cycle of increased uncertainty and another border poll in seven plus years, as per the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).

That returns to my point about consensus. We only have to look at the EU Treaty of Lisbon vote in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) to see that they now have consensus after a second vote.

If my calculations are correct then 200,000 more people in RoI voted for the treaty change for the Good Friday Agreement than for the Treaty of Lisbon.

However the interim period between a border poll and later border polls in NI would be chaotic. We cannot afford to jeopardise future relationships. Remember the GFA says seven plus years between polls, not every seven years ...

Loose ends over matters such as trade under the NI Protocol have to be resolved before a border poll, not afterwards.

Gareth Burns, Kircubbin, Co Down

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