Steve Davies: prediction

Transcript context

…My people, the Irish, now there’s no border whatsoever between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. When you drive from one to the other the sign changes from kilometers to miles. You get a different cell phone signal, but so many people from Ireland proper now have summer homes in the north or they’re connected in some way. There are actually homes built that straddle the border. You go from one room of the house to another and you go from one country to another. There’s been peace since the Belfast agreement. Is it now not truly inconceivable to reinstitute a hard border between the two Irelands? What will be done because of this fact? Will we not end up with a border being between Belfast and Heathrow Airport rather than along Donegal County between the two Irelands. Tell us. I think what will happen is that the Irish government and the British government will agree that the Irish government will do the British government’s dirty work and have all the border controls and checks in places like Waterford, Cork, and Dublin rather than… Which is what happened before 1971, rather than what you suggest, because nobody, I think, in their right mind wants to have a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. It’s a complete joke anyway. The kind of things you talk about are not new. Even when the Troubles were going on, the block houses and the fences were around, it was still very hard to tell where the border was in places like [inaudible] and South [inaudible] . Nobody really wants that. I actually think, though, while I think Scotland will stay in the UK I think there is quite a realistic chance that Northern Ireland will vote to join the Republic or join the Republic under some kind of condominium scheme. I think that’s actually quite possible because, for one thing, the demographics are changing. The next census is probably going to show a Catholic majority in Northern Ireland, which doesn’t necessarily mean a majority for union of the Republic but it’s a major shift. Also, increasingly, the younger generation of the Protestant population in Northern Ireland are not as attracted to the historic Ulster identity as the older generation are. I think that it’s quite likely that there will be a significant move, if not fully toward a united Ireland, in the direction of a united Ireland as a result of Brexit. I think that’s one of the…which, also, I think would be a good thing, in many ways. I think that’s another one of the consequences falling from it. Why is it there’s a movement…it has different names. Some people call it populism. I’m not sure that’s the right word because it’s not always that popular. In England, we’ve had it. In parts of the United States…you don’t really have it much at all in Ireland. You don’t have it much at all in Spain. It’s growing in France, especially with young people. We’ll see how strong it is. It was strong in the Netherlands but it failed, though, because the more centrist parties moved sharply to the right. Two interrelated questions. Why have left wing parties in so many countries become so weak? Labor in England is just a joke. It’s not even a joke. It’s one reason why Theresa May can call another election. Social democratic parties across the continent are looking extremely weak, pretty consistently. In some, but not all, other countries there are these rising populist or alt‑right movements. What’s your take on the broader developments that are driving this new and actually pretty startling configuration of loyalties? How do you see that?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.