THE next Irish government should plan for constitutional change across the island, a former SDLP leader said today.

Colum Eastwood told the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme that conversations about a unity referendum had “moved to a different level” since Brexit in 2016.

The Foyle MP revealed that before and after the recent Irish election, his party’s New Ireland Commission wrote to all parties asking them “to make a commitment to working towards Irish unity and to planning for Irish unity, if they form part of the next government.”