[netcan]

I imagine this will be confusing for Northern Ireland Unionists, and Republicans probably.

It's hard not to see this as a precedent. Perhaps even a precedent in international geopolitics. If Scotland has an inalienable right to secede by popular referendum, Why not Iraqi Kurdistan? Why Not Turkish Kurdistan? Why not Crimea?

[soneil]

It's going to be incredibly confusing for Northern Ireland. Historically, and culturally, they have much closer ties to Scotland than England/Wales.

So what happens when the unionists find themselves left attached to 'the wrong union'?

[netcan]

It's a layered and weaved history. Northern Ireland's Gaelic culture is historically related to Isle of Mann and Northwest Scotland's Gaelic cultures. At certain points in history the spoken dialects, kinships and such were closer between these regions then they were between Northern Ireland and other parts of Ireland. Dublin was a Gaelic-Viking town, later a Anglo-Irish-Norman town.

During the 16th-18th centuries, "The Plantations" there was a lot of migration of Loyalists from the Scottish Lowland. Their descendants make up the majority of the island's Presbyterians. Some still call themselves (or their subdialect of English) Ulster (Norther Ireleand) Scots.

Obviously there is even more weaving and layering. There are mountains of historical threads, cultural similarities. The Highland clan system is related to the Northern Irish system. There was trade dating back to prehistoric times.

When Irish Nationalism was on the rise, strongly Republican and strongly Catholic, these people developed their own Unionist political identity.

The whole thing is predicated on being in the United Kingdom. With political identities UK becoming Welsh, Scottish, English, even Mannish (Is there a Cornish nationalism?), where does that leave the Ulster Scots (who generally don't go by that demonym)?

Confusing.

Maybe it will confuse some sense into the situation.

[gadders]

See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-28756531