ABSTRACT
Brexit’s four-year threat of rebordering on the island of Ireland, and its ossifying effect on binary conceptions of Irish and Ulster British identities, fatally undermined the shared home-place enterprise established in the Irish cultural borderscape. Furthermore, the Brexit threat gave politically momentum to the quest for borderlessness on the island of Ireland through another binary exercise: a Border Poll.
Should a Border Poll deliver a united Ireland, the need to secure a shared home place for the Irish and the Ulster British would, in the first instance, necessitate the continuation of Northern Ireland as a federal or confederal unit of a united Ireland as the bottom line. However, there is no reason to believe that this in itself would resolve the Irish–Ulster British culture war. A violent Ulster British loyalist backlash would be politically fruitless because, in the event of a Border Poll that delivered a united Ireland, there would be no route back to bordering on the island of Ireland, no route back for Northern Ireland as a member of the UK. Nevertheless, alienation, agitation, antagonism, and strife anew could be anticipated until another peace process is initiated and takes hold. A strong British–Irish intergovernmental relationship would be required in that eventuality, as would the involvement of the EU.
