Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9827801:


Cutting ties 2 2, 6:38am

@CanuckAbroad

I'll just copy-paste part of what I wrote to boring7 below before you posted this:

"In the case of Northern Ireland Britain has already signed on to them being allowed to join the republic if a majority of their population so wishes - that's part of the Good Friday agreement."

And in the case of Gibraltar it's always been the British position that they are only honouring the will of the people living there - who have repeatedly voted to remain with the UK.

But in the referendum on Brexit 95.91% of voters in Gibraltar backed remain, with a turnout of 83.64%.
No other part of the UK or territory had anywhere near that massive support for remain.

So it's not at all unreasonable to think that a future referendum in Gibraltar about joining Spain - and thus rejoining the EU - might give a different result.

But it's obviously never the case that Spain or Ireland will be doing anything about these territories.
Instead, if any change will happen in their status, it will be the result of the population in those territories wanting that change.
And if that happens, Britain will be basically powerless to stop it as they can't really hold on to them by the use of brute force.

And the same obviously goes for Scotland as well.