Brexit's legacy for England will be politics as sectarian as Northern Ireland's

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Northern Ireland has had two electorates for decades. Parties battle in one or the other, leaving slim pickings for those who try to reach across the divide. As Geoffrey Evans, another BES author, put it this week: “British politics is no longer about the battle for the middle ground. It’s become like the Northern Ireland system.” And Evans adds a sobering further thought, that in Northern Ireland the winners are the parties that voters trust not to give in to the other side. “Could the Liberal Democrats be the Sinn Féin of all this,” he wonders.

Northern Ireland’s divides are rooted in centuries of religious divide. The Brexit divide in Britain is far more recent. But it is rooted in identities and anger, too. If Brexit does become the defining issue in mid-21st-century British politics, the hope of a country coming back together could be as fragile as the dream of Irish peace now is, and just as fraught.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/brexit-legacy-england-northern-ireland-sectarian-politics]

Interesting article. I think it pushes the bounds of credibility a bit but I put that down to if you are not from Northern Ireland how very very much division and living in silos is a very real thing. Think I unlikely that that culture borne in violence will be replicated in England, but it s an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.