Readers blog: NI and Scotland's love affair with Europe born in antipathy

NOW that British Prime Minister May has triggered Article 50, many voters in Northern Ireland and Scotland find themselves peering through Alice’s Looking Glass at a transformed world they did not ask to visit.

In the 1975 referendum, the majority of voters in these two British regions voted clearly in favour of exiting the then European Economic Community (EEC). Yet, fast forward to 2017, and the irony is inescapable that these very same regions find themselves pitted against the Brexit argument.

In 1975, nationalist parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland shouted their disapproval from the hilltops, based on three main reasons; the illegitimacy of the London government to act on their behalf, their fear of yet another foreign government controlling their lives and the prospect of heavily-subsidized European farmers undercutting British produce and impoverishing farmers.