"What haunts everybody, or should haunt everybody, is the Brexit referendum of 2016, said O'Toole. We do not want a referendum on a thumbs up-thumbs down, vague proposition whose consequences have not been spelled out because then you find yourself with an extraordinarily divided society where people who have lost are not reconciled to losing and the people who have won don't know quite what it is that they have won."
"Fintan O'Toole, the author and Irish Times columnist, and Sam McBride, the Northern Ireland editor of the Belfast Telegraph, have concluded that the political establishments in Ireland and Britain are woefully unprepared for a potentially fraught and seismic referendum. The lesson of Brexit hasn't been learned, which is that stuff can come out of the blue and can gather momentum very quickly, O'Toole said this week. I would suggest that the political architecture of our archipelago remains very unstable."
A hasty referendum a decade ago polarised the UK and created chaos, and a similar referendum on a united Ireland could repeat that outcome. Government and voters previously sleepwalked into Brexit, and similar dynamics could trigger convulsions for which no one is ready. Political establishments in Ireland and Britain remain woefully unprepared for a potentially fraught and seismic referendum. Brexit demonstrated that events can arise suddenly and gather momentum quickly. A simplistic thumbs-up, thumbs-down referendum whose consequences are unspecified risks leaving society deeply divided, with losers unreconciled and winners uncertain of their gains.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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