Orange Order
Orange Order parade
Ulstermen – or at least those of them who are persuadable – mostly understand why the Republic would not commemorate the battle of the Boyne
Up until Monday, I’d have said Nationalists had a pretty strong argument to make on that front.
I must confess, such conversations have always struck me as intellectually interesting, but ultimately very silly
The passage of time has made the intellectual contradictions in Irish Republicanism much harder to sustain.
The absence of violence was supposed to bring them together. If anything, it appears to have driven them further apart.
Orange Order parade
Far from weakening the Union with England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Brexit actually strengthened it.
The big problem here is – as the recent assembly results suggest – that nationalism in Northern Ireland isn’t growing.
How can you say to Unionists that you respect them and their votes while at the same time saying that their country is illegitimate?
Whether a horrific crime is relevant today, or just a form of outrage archaeology is, in Sinn Fein’s telling, a simple matter of first asking which side carried it out.