Steve Baker, a “Brexit spartan” who voted against Theresa May’s deal with the EU on all three occasions, has said the vote to leave the EU should have required a supermajority of 60 per cent.

Having, by his own admission, completely failed to understand the horrors that the EU referendum would unleash on the politics of the United Kingdom, it is partly grimly ironic, but mainly just grim, that self-described Brexit hardman Steve Baker is now bringing to bear his unique brand of absolutely no wisdom whatsoever to the political sensitivities of Northern Ireland.

A Government minister has expressed regret that the Brexit referendum did not require a supermajority to pass.

‘It probably should have been a supermajority – that’s a huge thing for me to say’, says Steve Baker on 2016 referendum.

The Irish News view: NIO minister Steve Baker is wrong to say basis of unity vote should change