UK Supreme Court refuses to hear case aimed at setting out criteria for border poll

The Good Friday Agreement sets out that the NI Secretary of State can call a vote if he believes a majority of people no longer want to remain part of the United Kingdom. However, Mr McCord’s legal team say the circumstances in which a border poll will be called are “the elephant in the room”.

An Irish Independent poll, published over the weekend, suggested seven out of 10 voters in both the Republic and Northern Ireland want to see a referendum within five years.

However, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said recently that a poll would not take place for “a very, very long time to come”.

Mr McCord, a unionist whose son was killed by a UVF gang in 1997, told the Irish Independent he was disappointed the UK Supreme Court rejected his case on the basis it didn’t raise a point of law – but he was not surprised.

He said many people in Britain have “so little knowledge of what really goes on in Northern Ireland”.

“It [a referendum] should not be down to one individual, the Secretary of State, a person who only lives here for a certain number of days a year at the grace of whatever prime minister they serve under.

“All I wanted was legislation set in stone that a border poll would only be held when certain conditions are met, not at the whim of a Secretary of State.”

He said Sinn Féin and the DUP were able to use the prospect of a poll for the “politics of fear” at each election because there is no outline of when one might occur.

“The DUP will say ‘get out and vote for us, don’t let Sinn Féin be the biggest party’. Sinn Féin will say ‘vote for us and you’ll get a united Ireland’.”

A report compiled by the chairman of the Seanad, Mark Daly, based on the legal arguments in the McCord case notes that it is not even clear who would be entitled to vote in a unity referendum. Different rules apply to local and national elections while in the Scottish referendum, the voting age was set at 16.

Belfast solicitor Ciaran O’Hare of McIvor Farrell Solicitors, who represented Mr McCord, acknowledged that the Supreme Court ruling ends the legal route for making the argument but said the High Court ruling was valuable.

“The case was extremely important. There are positive aspects to the judgments we got in the High Court and Court of Appeal because there was some discussion about the calling of a poll that was never really talked about in public before,” he said. “In the High Court, the judge’s understanding of what would have to occur is that there would have to be a poll both north and south at the same time.”

An exclusive Irish Independent/Kantar poll of 2,250 people across the island published at the weekend found a substantial majority of voters in the Republic are in favour of a United Ireland – but are not ready to pay extra tax in order to fund it. However, the logistics of how a 32-county State might work are less clear with divided views on issues such as flags and anthems.

Two in three voters in the south support a United Ireland compared to 35pc in the North.