For me, the starkest findings from the Ipsos MORI poll for King’s College London on British attitudes towards Northern Ireland is just how few Brits have ever popped across for a visit.

Three-quarters of people living in Britain have never visited at all, with a further seventeen per cent having visited just once or twice.

Just three per cent of respondents to the poll say they have lived or worked in Northern Ireland.

Even with the disruption caused by the various FlyBe cancellations this week, those seem astonishingly low figures. (In contrast, far more British people have visited the Irish Republic).

Truly, Northern Ireland is a far-away place of which people on the easternmost side of the Irish Sea know – and seemingly care – little.

This evident sense of detachment is, for me, more striking than the widely-reported figure showing just 36 per cent of Brits want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK in any future referendum on its constitutional position.

(In contrast, a similar poll shortly before the Scottish independence referendum showed 59 per cent of English voters wanted Scotland to remain in the Union).

‘Not so quick,’ some will say, ‘the same share – 36 per cent – say that they ‘don’t mind either way.’’ While just 19 per cent are explicit in wanting Northern Ireland to ‘leave the UK and join the Republic of Ireland.’

But there is a qualitative difference, surely, between those who are content to live with an outcome and those who actively want it to be achieved? The former is passive acceptance, the latter represents clear determination.

What should we take away from the poll?

Well, as so often in life, it’s nice to be wanted. Indifference matters. At the very least, it tells us people in Britain can imagine living in a radically altered constitutional settlement.

There’s little evidence of a ‘first principles’ defence of the status quo in these polling figures, with a fifth of the British public ready for Northern Ireland to go (around 12 million people – twice the population of the island of Ireland), with just over a third who want it to stay – and a further third who aren’t that fussed.

In a border poll scenario, this surely matters. A clear majority of the British public is either enthusiastic about Northern Ireland going, or relaxed about the prospect.

If you can imagine change, then you start to accommodate your thinking towards it. The English are beginning to ‘price in’ that the UK could look radically different in a few short years; whether that’s Northern Ireland leaving the UK, or, indeed, Scotland as well.

Perhaps, given so few have ever set foot in Northern Ireland, it’s a case of what you don’t value, you won’t miss.