LONDON: Former Conservative prime minister John Major and his erstwhile political rival in the 1990s, Tony Blair, put party politics to one side on Thursday for a pro-EU rally in Northern Ireland.
They warned that “Brexit” could “jeopardise the unity” of the UK, lead to another referendum of Scotland’s future and threaten Northern Ireland’s hard-won truce.
“Although today Northern Ireland is more stable and more prosperous than ever, that stability is poised on carefully constructed foundations,” Blair was to say.
“We are naturally concerned at the prospect of anything that could put those foundations at risk.”
Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers refuted their claims saying support for the peace process there was “rock solid”.
John said there was a “serious risk” of another independence referendum and, if Scotland found itself out of the EU, he could “envisage a different result” to the one in 2014.
He argued that a vote to leave the EU would also risk “destabilising the complicated and multilayered constitutional settlement that underpins the present stability in Northern Ireland” — a situation that in his words would be a “historic mistake”.
He said: “It would throw all the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw up into the air again, and no one could be certain where they would land.”
“Ireland would be “on the other side of the table” to Britain in its post-Brexit negotiations, he added.
Blair said Northern Ireland’s prosperity and its political arrangements could be negatively affected by a vote to leave.
Leave campaigners say the free travel area between Ireland and the UK would be retained — but Blair said this would be “difficult if not impossible” because checks would either be needed across the border between the two countries.
“It would make a nonsense of their entire argument for leaving which is all to do with the free movement of people in the European Union,” he said.
Villiers, who backs the Leave campaign, said Northern Ireland would thrive outside the EU and the former leaders’ warnings rang hollow.
“The vast majority of people in Northern Ireland believe their future should only ever be determined by democracy and consent and not by violence. I very much hope figures who played such an important role in the peace process would not suggest that a Brexit vote would weaken that resolve in any way.
“Whatever the result of the referendum, Northern Ireland is not going back to the troubles of its past and to suggest otherwise would be highly irresponsible.”
Scotland’s governing secessionist Scottish National Party has said Britain voting to leave the EU, while a majority of Scots voted to stay in, would trigger a second referendum on independence.
In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday agreement signed by Blair in 1998 put an end to three decades of mostly sectarian conflict in which some 3,500 people were killed.
Brexit campaigners accused the government of trying to rig the EU referendum and threatened legal action on Thursday as former London mayor Boris Johnson squared up for the campaign’s first TV debate.
British MPs prepared to approve emergency legislation to extend voter registration — a move that has infuriated the “Leave” camp because many late requests have been from broadly pro-EU younger voters.
Arron Banks, co-chairman of the Leave. EU campaign, said it was “a clear attempt to rig the referendum or, at a bare minimum, to load the dice”.
“It’s a desperate attempt by the establishment to register as many likely Remain voters as possible.
“We are therefore considering all available legal options with our legal team,” he said.
The outrage was sparked by a glitch with the government’s main registration website just ahead of a previous deadline of midnight on Tuesday, playing into a heated debate ahead of a knife-edge vote.
The deadline is now being extended until midnight.
Education minister and “Remain” supporter Nicky Morgan, said the “Leave” camp was “turning into a bunch of conspiracy theorists”.
Around 132,000 of the 525,000 people who did successfully register on Tuesday were aged under 25, compared to around 13,000 from the 65-to-74 age group.
Former London mayor and leading “Leave” campaigner Boris Johnson will go head-to-head with Scotland First Minister and “Remain” supporter Nicola Sturgeon for a potentially fractious debate later on Thursday.
The surge in voter registration requests on Tuesday came immediately after a tense TV face-off between Prime Minister David Cameron and anti-EU leader Nigel Farage.
Cameron fended off hostile questions about high immigration rates of EU workers while Farage was forced to defend himself against charges of racism.
The WhatUKThinks website’s average of the last six domestic opinion polls puts the “Remain” camp on 51 per cent and the “Leave” campaign on 49 per cent, but bookmakers still have “Remain” as strong favourite.
