The Irish Border Challenge: From Backstop to Border Poll

The Irish border presents a formidable international challenge to securing UK parliamentary support for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union. Brexit has intensified the challenge for a border poll on both sides of the Irish border. The challenge is twofold. Firstly, why and at what point does the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland make the judgement to declare a border poll? Secondly, by agreeing to a border poll in the Good Friday Agreement (1998), the UK government acknowledges that the ‘Irish border’ is a dynamic, temporal phenomenon subject to the forces of political and demographic change. What steps therefore is the UK government taking to prepare for a border poll? This project explores levels of preparedness for these challenges at government and policy levels, and at social, cultural and human levels, with a particular focus on daily life and citizenship.

Principal Investigator: Professor Enda McCaffrey, Nottingham Trent University