Worth its own thread because despite Brexit the Republic and Northern Ireland share an open border with no change on the horizon yet.
Massive demographic and social change in Britain is occurring at a previously unseen rate. It is impossible to predict the impacts this will have on Ireland in the short, medium and long term. For example if the wider UK follows the trend of somewhere like London - how would that impact relations?
A mistake of the western world has been a lack of long term thinking. Short election cycles have made it myopic. In a 100+ year time frame what will the demographics of the UK look like and, assume for a minute that Ireland/EU gets a handle on its own insane population dynamics, will we end up with Hirja from England via the North? etc etc
And vice versa - if I were English and the UK got a handle on its migration but Ireland/EU didnt - I would want the N Irish border closed/Northern Ireland dropped from the union.
Brexit has been a deliberate failure to control migration. Proof is clear in this graph
- Some 1.2 million people arrived in the UK in 2022 and about 557,000 emigrated
- British nationals made up 92,000 of the emigrants
To put some of the figures into context here are recent annual births and deaths figures:
In 2021, there were 694,685 live births in the UK
There were 666,659 deaths registered in the UK in 2021
Vital statistics in the UK: births, deaths and marriages - Office for National Statistics.
The British are being replaced at half a million a year on the face of it. This hides the % of births that are to foreign born new British citizens.
Some info on that here:
There were 445,055 live births to UK-born women and 179,726 live births to non-UK-born women in 2021.
Births by parents’ country of birth, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics.
That is a yard stick only as some fathers will be UK born and some UK born mothers will be with foreign born fathers. Maybe it evens out, maybe it doesnt. The data will never tell.
But the replacement, and it IS replacement, is running at a firm 500 to 600 thousand a year now. The UK has 121 years at 550,000 a year replacement migration max until the last British person is gone. Of course this will not occur evenly and ‘white flight’ (the term will cover all colours/ethnicities in reality who dislike what Britain becomes). The demographic shift will accelerate and occur in far less that 121 years as local tipping points are reached.* The timeframe is likely halved to 60 years as the mostly 100% end of life British cohorts die off at 600k a year. Knock a chuck out of the 60 years for the replacement already done. 16% of the population foreign born in England and Wales.
Ireland with its open border will potentially be attractive. Australia, New Zealand too etc. Of course all of these countries are following in the path laid out above.