For four generations, Charlie Weir’s family has farmed their land in Waringstown, Co Down.
His 24-year-old son represents the fifth, but Weir says “at the minute he doesn’t see a future in dairy farming”.
“It’s disappointing that people have put so much work and effort into building the [farm] … we left Europe with all these promises the farmers would be looked after and they’ve done nothing for them.”
Weir was among those who, 10 years ago, voted to leave the European Union.
“I voted the wrong way,” he says. “I wanted to believe the politicians we had were better than they were and they were going to keep their word, but it was all lies.
“Hospital waiting lists, all those things were bad then, but they’re worse now.
“I have elderly parents, they need the health system … that’s what [former British prime minister] Boris Johnson and all those people promised and I suppose maybe in my heart I wanted to believe it.”
In Northern Ireland, Weir was in the minority: 56 per cent of people in the North voted to remain and 44 per cent to leave, but in the UK as a whole the Leave vote won with a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
Weir “was going to vote to stay”, but a conversation a few days before the referendum changed his mind.
“Well, if there’s 27 people meeting in your yard every morning to decide what to do every day, how do you ever get anything done?” he asks.
“I thought, 27 leaders sitting round a table trying to sort something out would be very difficult to get an arrangement that suits everybody … when it’s just the prime minister and a good ministerial team they should be able to make better decisions for our country.
“That was my thinking, but it didn’t happen.”
As the only part of the UK with a land border with the EU, the consequences of leaving were always going to be significant in Northern Ireland.
Brexit put the Border – which had been rendered largely irrelevant by shared membership of the EU – back in people’s minds and on the political agenda and with it the possibility of constitutional change.
It is the clearest way, advocates for a united Ireland argue, of reversing Brexit.
In the last 10 years, Brexit has added further instability, caused the suspension of Stormont and has deepened unionists’ sense of insecurity. For many, Brexit has not strengthened their place in the UK, but has weakened it by creating a border in the Irish Sea.
A study last month by Queen’s University Belfast, which considered the impact of 10 years of Brexit on Northern Ireland, found most Northern voters – including a majority of Leavers – felt Brexit had been more of a failure than a success.
Two-thirds believed it had made the break-up of the UK more likely.
The dominant theme was “Brexit is a failure”, said one of the researchers, Prof Katy Hayward.
“Remainers say it’s a failure because it was an act of national self-harm and they didn’t want it anyway and for Leavers it’s a failure because Northern Ireland never got Brexit,” she says.
Typical comments were “Brexit was bad for Northern Ireland because we did not get it” and “Brexit was never implemented fully because we had/have a bunch of politicians who are weak, disorganised and lacking the backbone to stand up for the UK”.
Yet for most Leavers in Northern Ireland, this dissatisfaction has not translated into a change of heart: 10 years on, 57 per cent of voters would rejoin the EU, an increase of only one percentage point on the 56 per cent who voted Remain in the first place.
“The fact that figure really hasn’t moved is very telling,” Hayward says. “It shows the sort of regretfulness they talk about in England is less present here.”
In Northern Ireland, she says, “people are less likely to change their minds … because it’s layered on top of existing political identities”. She says the Windsor Framework, a deal agreed between the UK and EU to smooth Brexit trade issues in Northern Ireland, created a “very unusual position in which a compromise has been necessary and, by definition, nobody is happy with a compromise … in this case Leavers and strong unionists in particular are very unhappy with it”.
The blame has been directed towards “politicians … Leavers would blame the Irish Government and the EU for preventing Northern Ireland from getting a proper Brexit”, she says.
This sentiment is reflected by multiple Leave-voters who speak to The Irish Times, such as Irwin Armstrong, the owner of a healthcare diagnostics company in Ballymena and a member of the Conservative Party. The problem, he says, is Brexit “wasn’t handled properly” – it was a “horrendous mess” but nevertheless “gained us business”.
“I’d vote Brexit again,” he says without hesitation.
Anyone who has hesitated is much less likely to admit to it. Anecdotally some, such as Weir, have had second thoughts, but few are willing to go on the record.
Reasons range from embarrassment to not wanting to be seen as a “Lundy” – a traitor to unionism – to not wanting to be seen as responsible for what Alex Kane, the former head of communications with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), describes as the “absolute chaos” of Brexit.
“Nobody ever wants to say … ‘Oh, well, I voted for that’,” he says.
“A lot of them become very shaky when you say, the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Windsor Framework, these only exist because you backed [Brexit] – and not only in Northern Ireland, the DUP helped with the nationwide campaign.”
He also says: “Unionism is carrying the scars of this.”
Even within the UUP – which officially backed Remain but gave its members a free vote in the Brexit referendum – there is a reluctance to reject the principle of Brexit lest it appear less than staunch in its unionism and its support for Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.
Former UUP leader Tom Elliott voted Leave out of “frustration” at the EU’s lack of “flexibility” and he stands by his decision.
“I think the way that the European Union has acted since has probably copper-fastened the decision, because they have shown total intransigence around their dealings with Northern Ireland,” he says.
“There hasn’t been any real flexibility shown to those times we want to import goods from GB … some of this stuff is pretty ludicrous, a bit of soil on a piece of machinery coming from GB to NI.”
Yet, speaking to the Give My Head podcast last month, another former UUP leader, Robin Swann, admitted he would “probably look at going back in [to the EU] again in some sort of shape or form because I think we’ve seen the damage economically between Great Britain and Northern Ireland”.
Ten years on from the Brexit referendum, such issues remain deeply contentious for unionists and will remain so, Hayward says.
“The Windsor Framework will continue to persist as a divisive political issue precisely because it’s been layered on top of unionist identity and that sense of Brexit hasn’t been achieved at all is persisting.”
Weir says: “I voted with my heart and I should have voted with my head. Who wouldn’t take a promise of good health, care of your industry, farming being looked after and being improved. Who wouldn’t follow that dream?”