Brexit Day will be a day of joy for very few people in Northern Ireland – but not because they are all ardent Remainers.
One of the shocks of the referendum result was that Northern Ireland’s vote in favour of remaining in the EU was far from overwhelming.
Remain was almost universally endorsed by nationalists, by the centrist parties and by the Ulster Unionist Party.
But more significantly, Northern Ireland has for many years been a major net beneficiary of EU funding – effectively reversing the argument elsewhere in the UK that membership is a financial drain on taxpayers.
And as the only part of the UK where voting to Leave would mean a land border with the EU, there were powerful arguments in favour of Remain which led many observers to expect to see a crushing victory. In the end, the result was far closer than expected – 56% to 44%.
Low turnout
In part, that was because of a remarkable turnout differential between unionists – who came out in significant numbers to vote, and mostly voted for Brexit – and nationalists, whose turnout in many areas was shockingly low.
The affluent and largely unionist North Down constituency, which generally has the lowest turnout in Northern Ireland and which is geographically furthest from the border, had a higher turnout than West Tyrone which is right on the border and a Sinn Féin stronghold.
But what may have been a relaxed sense that Remain would win anyway and a detachment from what seemed to be an English dispute immediately gave way to stunned fury that Northern Ireland was being ‘taken out of the EU against its will’.
That sentiment was overlaid by the fact that a large minority of the population never wanted to be part of the UK in the first place.
Nationalist sentiment was reawakened
In a night, slumbering nationalist sentiment was reawakened. Since the 2016 vote, many of those who had been culturally nationalist but constitutionally unionist have come to actively desire Irish unity. However, there has been scant evidence of the mass movement towards Irish unity from unionists which would be necessary to win a referendum on a united Ireland.
For Remainers, more even than the practical implications of Brexit – the uncertainty, the new border regime and the innumerable questions about how live will be lived under the new reality – it is the sense that English nationalism is moving them in a direction which is antithetical to their view of the world but they are powerless to halt it.
Suddenly, Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million people realise just how small they are in a Union of 66 million citizens. Ironically that realisation has arrived during a debate about being part of a far larger union in which Northern Ireland is even smaller and less influential.
But it is not just nationalists who have been unsettled. The concerns of most unionists have been dramatically discarded by Boris Johnson.
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No clear plan
The DUP bungled on the grandest of stages, backing Brexit almost on a whim with no clear plan as to how it would implement the result it desired – and then hubristically swaggering as it propped up the Tories in government, only to be brutally cast aside.
Some Brexiteers still believe that there will be a brave new world. Last week the veteran DUP MLA Jim Wells told the Belfast Telegraph that he would be celebrating with a group of Union Flag-waving Brexiteers at the gates of Stormont on Friday night.
But is the hollowest of victories for them. Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken has observed that even for Brexiteers in Northern Ireland, they are effectively watching as the rest of the UK leaves the EU more fully while they remain tied to much of the EU regulation they despised – and with a hated ‘border in the Irish Sea’.
One of the few points on which many in Northern Ireland’s deeply divided populace would now unite – regardless of their view of the EU – is that the way in which Brexit has unfolded has been calamitous.
