The Northern Ireland Secretary has the power to call a referendum on Irish unity.

While it is not clear what the specific criteria to guide such a decision would be, the Good Friday Agreement states the referendum should be called if it appears likely that a majority of those voting would want Northern Ireland to leave the UK and become part of a united Ireland.

Mr Kyle said he does not believe the issue is affected by last week’s census results which revealed there are more Catholics than Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time since partition, or Sinn Fein emerging as the largest party at the last Assembly election.

“These are all inter-related aspects of the debate but actually that crucial aspect of when there is a clear majority, which is what was set out in the Good Friday Agreement, that is a different thing altogether,” he told the BBC’s Sunday Politics show at the Labour Party conference.

“If the circumstances emerge as set out in the Good Friday Agreement, I as secretary of state, would not play games. I would call the border poll.

“But these are issues that when you look at the direct needs in Northern Ireland right now – we have a cost-of-living crisis, there is a crisis in public services in Northern Ireland, the longest waiting lists for treatment in the NHS. This is what we’ve got to get on with now.

“So constitutional issues are important but don’t pretend that it is a distraction from the real issues.”

Mr Kyle also said if Labour comes to power and he becomes the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and it is clear that those circumstances emerge, he would set out the criteria in detail.

“We’re not even in that circumstance yet, so when we move towards the point where those circumstances set out in the Good Friday Agreement start to emerge and it becomes a priority for the people of Northern Ireland, I will act,” he said.

With speculation that a fresh Stormont Assembly election may have to be called with the institutions remaining unable to fully function due to the DUP’s boycott over the Northern Ireland Protocol, Mr Kyle said more elections will be a “sign of abject failure”.

“It is the job of politicians to solve the problems of residents and voters, it is not the job of voters to solve the problems of politicians,” he said.

“We have a small window of opportunity now. We have a new Prime Minister, a new Secretary of State, and we also have a new head of state. I think we have got a great opportunity to really seize the moment and move forward.”

Meanwhile, questioned on how much time he spends in Northern Ireland, Mr Kyle said he had been in the region twice in the last two months.

He added that since he was appointed to the shadow portfolio in November 2021, he has been many times, including a period where he visited every week for five weeks running.

Mr Kyle said his instinct has always been to get over to Northern Ireland as often as he can, but that depended on how much he is needed in Westminster.

“I would like to be there loads but I don’t have the power as opposition to sit around the table, to convene every political party around there and say, let’s start making progress on this,” he added.

Before publication of opinion polls was banned 15 days ago, far-right leader Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party, with its neo-fascist roots, led in popularity, suggesting Italians were poised to vote their first far-right government into power since the Second World War.

Close behind was former premier Enrico Letta and his centre-left Democratic Party.

Ms Meloni is part of a right-wing alliance with anti-migrant League leader Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi, the three-time premier who heads the Forza Italia party he created three decades ago.

Italy’s complex electoral law rewards campaign coalitions, meaning the Democrats are disadvantaged since they failed to secure a similarly broad alliance with left-leaning populists and centrists.

If Ms Meloni becomes prime minister, she will be the first woman in Italy to hold the office. But assembling a viable, ruling coalition could take weeks.

Nearly 51 million Italians were eligible to vote.

But pollsters predicted turnout could be even lower than the record-setting low of 73% in the last general election in 2018.

They say despite Europe’s many crises, many voters feel alienated from politics, since Italy has had three coalition governments since the last election – each led by someone who had not run for office.

Elections were being held six months early after Mario Draghi’s pandemic unity government collapsed in late July. Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, saw no alternative but to call another election.

Opinion polls found Mr Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief, hugely popular.

But the three populist parties in the coalition boycotted a confidence vote tied to an energy relief measure.

Their leaders, Salvini, Berlusconi and 5-Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, a former prime minister whose party is the largest in the outgoing parliament, saw Ms Meloni’s popularity growing while theirs slipped.

She kept her Brothers of Italy in the opposition, refusing to join Mr Draghi’s unity government or Mr Conte’s two coalitions that governed after the 2018 vote.

She further distanced herself from Mr Salvini and Mr Berlusconi with unflagging support for Ukraine, including sending weapons so Kyiv could defend itself against Russia. Her nationalist party champions sovereignty.

Before Russia’s invasion, Mr Salvini and Mr Berlusconi had praised Russian president Vladimir Putin. In the final days of the election campaign, Mr Salvini criticised Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

Many factories in Italy face cutbacks – some already have reduced production – and other business might close as they struggle with gas and electricity bills reaching 10 times higher than a year ago.

The major candidates, despite their political leanings, agreed on the urgency for a EU-wide price cap on energy prices, or failing that, a national one.

Mr Draghi, who remains in a caretaker role until a new government is sworn in, had for months already pressed EU authorities in Brussels for the same remedy.

The discussion centred on the future of the monarchy in the wake of the Queen’s death – a polarising topic for Labour, with some dissent possible during a rendition of God Save The King at the conference on Sunday.

The panellists included author Paul Richards, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee and Dr Adam Tucker, a specialist in constitutional law at the University of Liverpool.

Mr Richards drew a laugh from the audience as he opened his own address by welcoming them to “naughtiest fringe meeting” of the conference.

Ms Toynbee told the event that she would have liked the Queen to be “Elizabeth the last”, but suggested it would not be a good idea for Labour to call for the abolition of the monarchy at the next general election.

Instead, she said: “Our job is to persuade people gradually, which is working as the tide is moving slowly and in a republican direction, until such a time there’s a majority of people also want to open up the whole issue, have a proper discussion about it.”

She added: “There is of course never a right time, because either Queen Elizabeth is alive and that’s not a very good idea or she’s died and then that’s not a very good idea, either. So there never is a perfect time to talk about this.

“I would like her to have been ‘Elizabeth the last’ but there was no moment, there is no fraction, no nanosecond between her drawing her last breath… and the crown falling upon her son the next instant. There was no moment when we were allowed to discuss it, even.”

Dr Tucker said the King may be “less well equipped” to walk the “tightrope of our politics and constitution and ceremony” than his mother.

He insisted “no political power should ever be held on a hereditary basis”.

Mr Richards said it was the “right time for scrutiny” following the Queen’s death.

He added that, in his view, there is nothing “revolutionary” about wanting to live in a republic, claiming “we’re the unusual ones” with a constitutional monarchy in Britain.

Jenny Rathbone, the Welsh Labour Assembly Member for Cardiff Central, was also in attendance.

A leaflet provided at the event warned that Britain faces a future with a “white, privileged male” as head of state at least until the end of the century.

“There’s little doubt that this will only accelerate calls for an end to the monarchy,” it said.

“Labour for a Republic believes that accident of birth is no qualification for our country’s top job and is completely incompatible with Labour’s values of democracy and equality.

“Under a republican constitution, citizens ,collectively, would be sovereign, with a head of state elected on merit and with responsibility for protecting our constitution. We say Labour must lead on this issue.”

Mr Burgon welcomed a “considered” discussion on the topic.

“In 1993 the law was changed so that the monarch wouldn’t pay inheritance tax on private assets… as opposed to state assets – so private assets,” he said.

“I think these are still legitimate matters of inquiry. And people who respect the Queen’s service… can still hold these views. It’s not an insult to anybody. It’s a legitimate discussion in a democratic society.”

Asked about the meeting earlier this week, shadow minister James Murray insisted that fringe events are not organised, nor endorsed by, the party.

Put to him by Sky News presenter Kay Burley that it seemed “terribly inappropriate” to discuss at the conference whether the monarchy should be abolished, given the current circumstances, he said: “The fringe events are not organised by the Labour Party or endorsed by the Labour Party.

“That’s not the view of the Labour Party frontbench, that’s not the view of myself or Keir Starmer.”