We can split hairs about what is and is not democratic until the end of time, but the debate takes place in a historical vacuum: the creation of Northern Ireland was a response to a very specific set of circumstances, and I don't think yak-shaving about democratic niceties casts any light.

It is moot anyway, because there is no prospect of changing Northern Ireland's status without democratic sanction. Which vote of course takes place at the pleasure of His Majesty's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Can you point to a vote by the Irish people in favour of independence?

I'm pretty sure you can't given that no such vote has ever taken place.

The IRA derived their 'legitimacy' from it.

And to be quite frank, you are probably thinking of the Provisional IRA when you put legitimacy in quotes, where as this was the original IRA, who basically have nothing in common with the Provos (as they were called when I were a lad) except the name.

The Brits left split polities in quite a few places as they decolonized. Almost as if it was policy.

I'm not even Irish and certainly have no skin in this game but what the UK did to Ireland over the centuries is disgraceful, and it clearly is struggling to come to terms with it.

I wonder if NI wouldn't be better off part of the Republic, now with Brexit and everything.

Unification will happen when the advantage of receiving such money will be clearly be offset by the disadvantage of having a broken political system (NI regional government is boycotted by unionists, while the national government is boycotted by republicans). As money reduces further and further while annoyances get bigger and bigger (because of an entrenched "England-first" government pursuing policies like Brexit), that threshold gets closer and closer.

Those subsidies don't seem to be enough to save it when the infrastructure is crumbling and everyone is moving abroad for jobs.

>money they likely wouldn't get from Dublin

They would get it from the EU then, and probably a lot more, as the UK gov is now struggling financially to stay solvent. The EU can very generous if you can play the game right. Just look at Poland 20 years ago and Poland today, the difference EU funds and the EU open market made, is night and day. It has also benefiter the Republic of Ireland. I doubt they would have been in the same state today without EU membership. For all its faults, the EU has been a force for good many times. Another English speaking region joining the EU could be a mutual benefit.

It used to be the case that the roads would get noticeably worse as you crossed the border into the republic, now the situation is reversed.

NI receives a disproportionately large amount of money from the UK gov compared to other UK nations.

The place needs to be actively developed, not repeatedly patched up and sent on its way to hobble along.

NI is a little better-off than much of England in that regard, outside of Tory towns and villages. My home town never recovered after Thatcher.

The UK government didn't have a lot of choice, the Ulster Protestants would almost certainly have fought a civil war if the full island was granted domininion status.

The boundary commission was problematic, but the real issue post partition was the removal of PR by the NI government. I think that if the ballot box hadn't essentially been stacked against Catholics we might not have seen the Troubles.

India, Pakistan, I am seeing a pattern.

Even if you get independace from england, you won't leave in one piece.

So which one was that then? Was this before the Representation of the people act or were women and working class men still banned?

> It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.

In the 1918 election in Ulster 66% voted for unionist parties.