{"id":197785,"date":"2025-06-19T18:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T18:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/197785\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T18:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T18:19:09","slug":"a-nigel-farage-led-uk-goverment-could-herald-a-united-ireland-varadkar-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/197785\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nigel Farage-led UK goverment could herald a united Ireland \u2013 Varadkar \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The election of Reform Party<\/a> leader, Nigel Farage<\/a>, as British prime minister after the next Westminster election would accelerate support for Irish unification and Scottish independence, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

Speaking on the BBC\u2019s The View programme, shown on BBC Northern Ireland on Thursday night, Mr Varadkar praised British prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a>\u2019s attitudes towards Ireland since his election last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrime minister Starmer might be re-elected for a second term. It\u2019s equally possible \u2013 not probable \u2013 but possible, that Nigel Farage could be prime minister of the UK in four years\u2019 time, or in nine years\u2019 time,\u201d said Mr Varadkar.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would change the picture,\u201d he said, and change opinions about Irish unification among \u201csome people in the middle ground in Northern Ireland if in Westminster we had an English nationalist government\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Farage\u2019s party won hundreds of seats across England and Wales<\/a> in May\u2019s local elections and frequently leads national opinion polls ahead of Labour and the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Even the possibility of a Reform-led government in London strongly supports his contention that the Irish Government should be planning for Irish unification, even if it offered no view on when a referendum should be held, Mr Varadkar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes sense to do a bit of horizon scanning, to do a bit of scenario planning, to think about some of those issues, even if it\u2019s a just-in-case,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A Farage-led administration would \u201cdouble down on Brexit\u201d because those who supported the UK\u2019s exit from the EU believed \u201cit wasn\u2019t done properly\u201d, the former Fine Gael leader and taoiseach said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019d see is an attempt to rescind many of the things that prime minister Starmer and his government have done to bring the United Kingdom even further away from the European Union,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Explainer: what is Keir Starmer\u2019s Brexit reset deal?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Mr Varadkar said he believed a Farage-led UK government would put Irish unification \u201ccentre stage\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it isn\u2019t just because a right-wing nationalist government in London would want to bring the UK and Northern Ireland away from Europe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Many conservative and populist attitudes pushed by Reform on social issues, such as gay rights, would not be liked by a majority of people in Northern Ireland, from both traditions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[They] have a liberal and European outlook, and if that\u2019s the kind of government they had in London versus a government in Dublin that was very different, it might make them more likely to vote yes to unification,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Varadkar said he hoped a Farage-led government would not happen, \u201cbut I\u2019m saying it could, and we should think about that\u201d.<\/p>\n

If Farage succeeds, it will be because of English voters showing \u201cscant regard\u201d for opinions in Northern Ireland and Scotland, he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen that happen before, and we saw it happen with Brexit. Could it happen in four to nine years? It could.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Rory Stewart: Britons\u2019 view of Ireland has gone from \u2018patronising superiority to complete ignorance\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Since he stepped down as taoiseach, Mr Varadkar has repeatedly supported Irish unification, though he told the BBC programme that he had not begun planning for unity during his time in power because he was trying to secure an EU\/UK deal.<\/p>\n

Unification is \u201cnot inevitable\u201d and must be worked towards, he said, but there are \u201ca lot of factors that would suggest that we\u2019re on that trajectory\u201d, especially recent polling showing that a majority of young people in Northern Ireland favour it, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that will carry through, and that\u2019s why I think it\u2019s something that we should plan for,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s something that shouldn\u2019t just be an aspiration; it\u2019s something that should be an objective of the Irish Government, and of Irish society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The election of Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, as British prime minister after the next Westminster election would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,13515,393,4884,807,38002,60969,384,1144,386,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-197785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-common-ground","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-keir-starmer","14":"tag-labour-party-uk","15":"tag-leo-varadkar","16":"tag-nigel-farage","17":"tag-northern-ireland","18":"tag-reform-uk","19":"tag-scotland","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114711413590058570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}