Peter Robinson: We have to be ready to fight our case in a border poll

Writing in the News Letter, in his first bi-weekly column, the ex-DUP leader says the Union’s supporters face a “great task” in a “showdown” over the constitutional question.

The former first minister’s column (see link below) comes a day after Taoiseach Micheal Martin launched Dublin’s shared island unit, which has caused concern to many unionists.

Mr Robinson says that Covid, Brexit and the workings of Stormont are more urgent issues for Northern Ireland, and less pressing matters “get pushed down the line”. But even so, unionists need to get ready for a referendum on the future of NI, he says, returning to a suggestion he caused controversy by raising at the 2018 MacGill Summer School.

Mr Robinson writes: “I know there are border poll deniers who think such a referendum will never be called or believe that to talk about and prepare for a plebiscite creates momentum that will speed its arrival. I do not subscribe to such complacent and dangerous thinking.”

The one-time East Belfast MP says that “in the past when the Union was in peril unionist parties worked together”.

He says that while elected unionists need to be the face of the “campaign for the Union” they do “not need to do the spadework”. Instead, he writes, a think-tank or working group needs to be set up to research “the benefits of the Union between Great Britain and NI” and offer campaign advice.

But he says the group “should not be packed with safe hands from the parties’ ranks”. Winning a border poll will need “consistent espousal” of the value of the UK, “not a three-week splash”.

• Peter Robinson: Northern Ireland needs a pro Union group that will help prepare for any border poll

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