John Walsh
speaker
89 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 25 Jul
John Walsh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But for me, that's missing the point.
You can't have a border poll unless it's preceded by very extensive dialogue.
I mean, all those issues you mentioned, they're going to mean very different things for people south of the border and people north of the border.
north of the border, as you know, they're going to have different priorities, particularly if you're from a unionist background.
What does this new dispensation look like?
Am I right?
Well, I think very clearly with Brexit, it was the complete lack of preparation going into the referendum.
It was presented as this simple binary proposition.
Vote yes and everything will be fine.
You know, the consequences of voting for Brexit, you know, it'll be relatively a seamless transition into this sunny upland future.
And it quite clearly wasn't.
But I also don't think the people, you know, in that referendum really understood the forces they were unleashing.
Because 10 years on from Brexit, it has unleashed 10 years of political instability.
We're now on our seventh British prime minister during that period.
So imagine if that happened in Northern Ireland or Ireland, the island of Ireland.
where the recent history is much more problematic than the United Kingdom.
If a border poll that was rushed, ill-thought-out and unplanned happened, and if there was a very marginal vote for unification or reunification, depending on your perspective,
you know, it could potentially unleash a period of quite significant instability and that would be very, very hard to contain.
Absolutely.
I mean, if you were to hold a referendum tomorrow, for example, what would people be voting on?
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