UK PRIME MINISTER Andy Burnham has said a united Ireland referendum is “off the table”.

Burnham made the remarks while speaking to reporters in Belfast, where he is meeting with political parties to discuss budget pressures in Northern Ireland.

This is Burnham’s first visit to Northern Ireland since becoming prime minister, and is part of his cost-of-living tour of the UK.

Burnham said: “I’m here, as I said earlier, to listen, and I will take a collaborative approach, but some issues will be off the table, and that is one issue that will be off the table.”

He added: “I think we’ve got to focus on bringing people together as best we can, and I think we’ve lived through a decade where there’s been a referendum on Brexit, we had Scottish independence just before it.

“What we find is the rifts that come from those situations take a long time to heal, and it sets you right back, and you can’t focus on what’s right in front of us here and now, the cost-of-living pressures that are hurting people in Northern Ireland, the need to get that budget set so that public services can function as they should.

“These are the things right in front of us and sometimes politicians go to things that they want to see, as opposed to getting the solutions that the public need.

“I think a decade since the Brexit referendum, I think we’ve had too much division, too much arguing, too much, backward looking. We need to fix the things right in front of us in the here and now.”

Burnham met with young people at the Oh Yeah Music Centre in the Cathedral Quarter area of the city on Thursday afternoon.

Later, he will host talks with First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly and separately with the main political parties.

Former UK prime minister Keir Starmer struck similar notes on a potential referendum back in 2021 while he was Labour leader. He said at the time that the prospect of a referendum on Irish unification is “absolutely hypothetical” and “not even on the horizon”. 

In 2024, Michelle O’Neill said she would raise the issue of a future referendum on Irish unity during a meeting with Rishi Sunak when he was prime minister. However, The Guardian reported at the time that Sunak urged Stormont to focus on day-to-day issues rather than constitutional change.