Whilst the Belfast Agreement (GFA) does, in fact, allow for a poll on Irish Reunification, at what stage the poll is called is actually quite ambiguous!!
The Belfast Agreement states that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland shall call a border poll “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland". Unfortunately, the document doesn’t actually provide a mechanism for how the SoS will come to such a decision!!
If it is on a % head count after an election then, in the Scottish case, as the SNP and the Scottish Greens achieved barely 49% of the votes cast would this be sufficient to trigger IndyRef 2?!?
In addition, the Belfast Agreement states that consent for a united Ireland would need to be given “concurrently” in the north and south. So, axiomatic to this would be that any IndyRef 2 should need the consent of the rest of the UK for Scottish cessation!!
As an aside, we need to be careful when the Belfast Agreement is held up as an exemplar!! As a wiser man than I put it...’The core of the problem [with the Belfast Agreement] lies in the ‘constructive ambiguity’ at the heart of the Agreement – that is, a form of words that all could sign up to because each party could interpret them differently’.
Surely, what is needed in the Scottish Referendum debate is clarity and not constructive ambiguities!! The next few months/years/decades (delete as applicable) arevgoing to be tortuous enough!!!