He’s also right in saying that the issue “can’t be allowed to become ... a precondition for a border poll” (Adams, 2024b).[1] But he’s completely wrong to claim that it’s “ridiculous” to suggest that unionists are making reconciliation a precondition (Adams, 2024a). Many of them are. And they’re not the only ones.
Unionist politicians, activists, commentators and scholars have long championed a version of reconciliation that guarantees the north’s place in the UK. In the early years of the peace process, unionist academic Arthur Aughey suggested that unionists will never be reconciled inside a united Ireland. Reconciliation requires that nationalist Ireland transform itself: it must drop its demand for reunification and accept as permanent the constitutional status quo of two sovereign jurisdictions on the island (Aughey, 1996 & 1989; Kennedy, 2009). Other unionists explicitly establish the achievement of reconciliation as a necessary condition for a united Ireland. They cloak the hard, undemocratic notion of a veto in the soft, reconciliatory language of cross-community consensus, joint consent, or parallel consent. They say, in other words, that the unionist/loyalist public must be reconciled to a united Ireland before constitutional change can occur (Foster, 1995; Foster & Smith, 2021). In November 2022, DUP MP Ian Paisley introduced a bill that would require a supermajority (i.e., unionist consent) for constitutional change, in the interests, he said, of tempering division and promoting stability (BBC, 2022). These other positions, seemingly softer than Aughey’s uncompromising stand, produce the same outcome: no change to the constitutional status of the north. During the anti-protocol campaign, many unionists went much further to argue that reconciliation or consensus must come before any kind of change that unionism deems constitutional (Donaldson, 2023; Campbell, 2023; Bryson & Thoburn 2023).
Unionists are not alone in this questionable use of reconciliation. Since its inception, the SDLP employed the discourse of reconciliation to lead the way in reconstituting northern nationalism’s aspiration away from uniting the territory of Ireland to uniting the people of Ireland (Todd, 1990).[2] One principal effect of this revision, as examined in the first part of this series, was that nationalism and the segment of republicanism represented by Sinn Féin accepted the “principle of consent”, which granted unionists a veto over constitutional change.
Two recent examples of the reconciliation-as-precondition argument—by Simon Harris and Naomi Long—merit a brief comment. On becoming Taoiseach in April 2024, Simon Harris immediately announced that Irish unity is not his focus. Rather: “The priority right now, in my view, for the people on the island of Ireland is to live in peace, live in prosperity, get to know each other better, cooperate and collaborate.” He wants to ensure “that we can see the full potential and beauty of the Good Friday Agreement in peace and prosperity across this island and closer relationships with our nearest neighbour in the UK” (Young, 2024). A week later, lest there be any doubt about where he stands on Irish unity, Harris said: “You don’t unite an island without uniting a people and without people getting to know each other better” (Wilson, 2024). For Harris, then, reunification may become his priority once there is a flourishing of peace, prosperity, good-neighbourliness, friendship, togetherness, cooperation, and collaboration that will come when the full realization of the beauty of the GFA delivers a people united. This position is a modern variant of the standard “uniting hearts and minds” trope that pushes Irish unity to a unrealizable future that can never arrive. Some commentators justifiably called out Harris for waffling on the constitutional question (Feeney, 2024; Manley, 2024).
Alliance leader Naomi Long, during a Westminster election debate in late June 2024, refuted the suggestion that her party is sitting on the fence over a border poll. "We don't sit on the fence” she said. “We have a strong position. We are in favour of a united community in Northern Ireland. That is our priority policy. We cannot have a united Ireland or a United Kingdom while this place remains divided” (Campbell, 2024). Long is half right. She’s correct in characterizing her party’s position that erasing division (i.e., achieving reconciliation) is a prerequisite for a united Ireland. But she’s mistaken to suggest that we cannot have a United Kingdom while there is social and political division. As Long and everyone else knows, the UK is the sovereign power in the north, so we do in fact have a United Kingdom even though serious divisions remain. Some people might even venture to propose that the British state in the north is a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation. The crucial point is that Long privileges UK over Irish sovereignty in her selective and contradictory use of the reconciliation argument. She sees reconciliation as a precondition for Irish sovereignty over the north, but does not reciprocate by requiring that reconciliation also be a precondition for continued British sovereignty. She believes British rule can persist in the absence of reconciliation, but Irish rule cannot begin until divisions are healed. She can continue living in a disunited United Kingdom but cannot contemplate entering a disunited united Ireland. In her glaring unfairness, Long is exactly like all the others who make this kind of argument. Irreconciliation is sufficient to block Irish unity but never a matter that should by itself rupture British sovereignty in the north. The universal imperative of “love thy neighbour” does not always or equally apply.
Andy Pollak’s position in this debate, though not as recent as that of Harris and Long, is useful to help flesh out what reconciliation-as-precondition means for the timing of Irish reunification. Recall that the conventional definition of a generation is a period of some 25 or 30 years, the average length of time between the birth of parents and their children. According to Pollak, reconciliation remains a utopian dream that the people administering the Agreement have failed to address meaningfully in the generation since 1998. Reconciliation work, he suggests, must continue for another generation at the minimum, but that is only the beginning. Pollak is silent on how many more years it will take to complete, or at least significantly advance, the process of reconciliation. But if 50 or 60 years on from the GFA represents just the start of the process, we’re probably looking at quite a long time. Pollak, then, will have a united Ireland in 100 or 200 years, ... maybe. The new centuries will doubtless witness people making the same kind of argument that Pollak is making now and that many made before him, which relegates reconciliation and Irish unity to a still more distant future. This timing unmasks the insidious agenda of the reconciliationistas: a united Ireland constantly pushed well beyond the political horizon. Reconciliation and therefore the opportunity for reunification will always be at least a generation away (Pollak, 2017).[3]
Pollak, like Naomi Long, also displays an astonishing hypocrisy in that the prospect of another 100 or 200 years of division in the north is not sufficient for him to begin questioning the maintenance of British rule in Ireland. The position shared by Pollak and Long has a related, unsavoury element: it privileges unionism over nationalism. It suggests that nationalist unhappiness with the constitutional status quo is infinitely tolerable, but the mere prospect of unionist discontent with a change in constitutional arrangements cannot be considered at all.
The goal of reconciliation is admirable. Many dedicated people will continue to advance it no matter what the constitutional status of the north. Political actors and commentators who selectively employ the notion of reconciliation as a weapon against Irish unity debase that commendable aim and disrespect those who work for it. The campaign for reunification is an opportunity for serious public engagement on the issue of reconciliation. That process will continue long after any realization of a united Ireland.
In the next installment, I’ll examine a bold but stealthy proposal for giving the north a blanket veto over the institutional forms, national symbols and policy priorities of a united Ireland.
Notes
[1] All direct quotations for which I do not cite a page or paragraph number are from internet documents that do not use a numbering system. Otherwise, I indicate the page, paragraph or column number of direct quotations.
[2] Justice Humphreys points out a major flaw in the SDLP’s position. In the constitutional conflict in Ireland, people and territory cannot be separated in the way the SDLP suggests: “the people are ... defined by reference to the territory” (Humphreys, 2018, p. 189).
[3] Consider briefly, for instance, the constant reiteration of the reconciliation argument over the past six or seven decades. Writing in 1957, Donal Barrington argued that reconciliation may take 50 years, or two generations (Barrington, 1957). In 1993, more than a generation after Barrington, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds said that achieving a united Ireland could take a generation (Mallie & McKittrick, 1996). Academic Roger Mac Ginty says that the 1998 Agreement was meant to defuse constitutional issues “for the foreseeable future” or for some “undetermined date in the future” (Mac Ginty, 2003, pp. 7 & 4, respectively). And now Pollak says, some 60 years after Barrington and a generation on from the Agreement, that reconciliation and thus a united Ireland is as far away as ever. That is, the unity of the people is no closer now than it was in 1957. According to the interminable timeline of the reconciliation argument, we’re right back where we started, exactly where Irish unity is destined ever to be—nowhere. Cox, like Aughey, is one of the few commentators invoking the reconciliation argument who openly admits that a focus on reconciliation rules out a united Ireland (Cox, 1985a & 1985b). In this admission, he is more candid than are the other reconciliationistas, but is equally implicated in employing a form of argument that subordinates nationalists to unionists. Sam McBride’s recent rendition of Winston Churchill’s position on the reunification of Ireland seemingly adds a new twist to the reconciliation game. Churchill, whose reputation as the great conciliator of Irish interests is apparently just being established, said: “It seemed to me that the passage of time might lead to the unity of Ireland itself in the only way in which that unity can be achieved, namely, by a union of Irish hearts”. And that union of hearts depends in turn on winning the freely-expressed consent of northern unionists to a united Ireland (McBride, 2025). In Churchill we again see the typical reconciliationista obfuscation of unity possibly occurring in “the passage of time”, which is attached to the usual condition of first securing unionist agreement. There is really nothing new here—except the discordant tying of Churchill’s name to what McBride incorrectly sees as a sincere attempt at Irish reconciliation—and all the flaws of the reconciliation argument that I’ve outlined apply equally to Churchill’s position.
References
Adams, D. (2024a). Address to Ireland’s Future Conference, Pathway to Change. SSE Arena. Belfast. 15 June. Podcast retrieved from.
Adams, D. (2024b). “Push for reconciliation faces opposition from the powerful.” Irish News. 24 June. Retrieved from.
Aughey, A. (1989). Under Siege: Ulster Unionism and the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.
Aughey, A. (1996). “Obstacles to Reconciliation in the South.” In Building Trust in Ireland. Studies Commissioned by the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 2-51. Belfast: Blackstaff Press in association with the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
Barrington, D. (1957). “Uniting Ireland.” Studies 46:184 (Winter): 379-402.
BBC. (2022). “Ian Paisley: DUP MP introduces Referendum Supermajority bill.” BBC. 9 November. Retrieved from.
Bryson, J. and E. Thoburn. (2023). Restoring Northern Ireland’s Place in the Union. Centre for the Union, Constitutional Studies Group. 9 January. Retrieved from.
Campbell, G. (2023). “One unchanging reality for Secretary of State – Campbell.” DUP. 24 March. Retrieved from.
Campbell, N. (2024). “Heated debate as senior politicians put on the spot over border and budgets.” Belfast Telegraph. 28 June. Retrieved from the Factiva (Dow Jones) electronic database of news articles [cited below as Factiva].
Cox, W.H. (1985a). “Who Wants a United Ireland?” Government and Opposition 21:1 (January): 29-47.
Cox, W.H. (1985b). “The Politics of Irish Unification in the Irish Republic.” Parliamentary Affairs 38:4 (Autumn): 437-44.
Donaldson, J. (2023). “Progress must be built on solid foundations.” DUP. 15 April. Retrieved from.
Feeney, B. (2024). “Unity waffle shows that Harris couldn’t care less about north.” Irish News. 10 April. Retrieved from.
Foster, J.W. (Ed.). (1995). The Idea of the Union: Statements and Critiques in Support of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Vancouver: Belcouver Press.
Foster, J.W., and W.B Smith. (Eds.). (2021). The Idea of the Union: Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Belcouver Press.
Humphreys, R. (2018). Beyond the Border: The Good Friday Agreement and Irish Unity after Brexit. Newbridge: Merrion Press.
Kennedy, D. (2009). “The Case against the Belfast Agreement.” In The Northern Ireland Question: The Peace Process and the Belfast Agreement. ed. B. Barton and P.J. Roche, 246-264. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mac Ginty, R. (2003). “Constitutional Referendums and Ethnonational Conflict: The Case of Northern Ireland.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9:2 (Summer): 1-22.
Mallie, E. & D. McKittrick. (1996). The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process. London: Heinemann.
Manley, J. (2024). “New man Harris fears to speak of uniting Ireland.” Irish News. 10 April. Retrieved from.
McBride, S. (2025). “Nationalists should have taken Churchill's advice on Irish unity.” Sunday Independent. 19 January. Retrieved from Factiva.
Pollak, A. (2017). “The anti-colonialist bullies versus the reconciliation persuaders.” 2 Irelands Together Blog. 25 September. Retrieved from.
Todd, J. (1990). “Northern Nationalist Political Culture.” Irish Political Studies 5:1 (January): 31-44.
Young, D. (2024). “Cost not main factor in United Ireland debate says incoming taoiseach.” Irish News. 8 April. Retrieved from.
Wilson, J. (2024). “Harris ‘irritated’ Northern Ireland remarks ‘taken out of context’.” Newstalk. 16 April. Retrieved from.
Unionist politicians, activists, commentators and scholars have long championed a version of reconciliation that guarantees the north’s place in the UK. In the early years of the peace process, unionist academic Arthur Aughey suggested that unionists will never be reconciled inside a united Ireland. Reconciliation requires that nationalist Ireland transform itself: it must drop its demand for reunification and accept as permanent the constitutional status quo of two sovereign jurisdictions on the island (Aughey, 1996 & 1989; Kennedy, 2009). Other unionists explicitly establish the achievement of reconciliation as a necessary condition for a united Ireland. They cloak the hard, undemocratic notion of a veto in the soft, reconciliatory language of cross-community consensus, joint consent, or parallel consent. They say, in other words, that the unionist/loyalist public must be reconciled to a united Ireland before constitutional change can occur (Foster, 1995; Foster & Smith, 2021). In November 2022, DUP MP Ian Paisley introduced a bill that would require a supermajority (i.e., unionist consent) for constitutional change, in the interests, he said, of tempering division and promoting stability (BBC, 2022). These other positions, seemingly softer than Aughey’s uncompromising stand, produce the same outcome: no change to the constitutional status of the north. During the anti-protocol campaign, many unionists went much further to argue that reconciliation or consensus must come before any kind of change that unionism deems constitutional (Donaldson, 2023; Campbell, 2023; Bryson & Thoburn 2023).
Unionists are not alone in this questionable use of reconciliation. Since its inception, the SDLP employed the discourse of reconciliation to lead the way in reconstituting northern nationalism’s aspiration away from uniting the territory of Ireland to uniting the people of Ireland (Todd, 1990).[2] One principal effect of this revision, as examined in the first part of this series, was that nationalism and the segment of republicanism represented by Sinn Féin accepted the “principle of consent”, which granted unionists a veto over constitutional change.
Two recent examples of the reconciliation-as-precondition argument—by Simon Harris and Naomi Long—merit a brief comment. On becoming Taoiseach in April 2024, Simon Harris immediately announced that Irish unity is not his focus. Rather: “The priority right now, in my view, for the people on the island of Ireland is to live in peace, live in prosperity, get to know each other better, cooperate and collaborate.” He wants to ensure “that we can see the full potential and beauty of the Good Friday Agreement in peace and prosperity across this island and closer relationships with our nearest neighbour in the UK” (Young, 2024). A week later, lest there be any doubt about where he stands on Irish unity, Harris said: “You don’t unite an island without uniting a people and without people getting to know each other better” (Wilson, 2024). For Harris, then, reunification may become his priority once there is a flourishing of peace, prosperity, good-neighbourliness, friendship, togetherness, cooperation, and collaboration that will come when the full realization of the beauty of the GFA delivers a people united. This position is a modern variant of the standard “uniting hearts and minds” trope that pushes Irish unity to a unrealizable future that can never arrive. Some commentators justifiably called out Harris for waffling on the constitutional question (Feeney, 2024; Manley, 2024).
Alliance leader Naomi Long, during a Westminster election debate in late June 2024, refuted the suggestion that her party is sitting on the fence over a border poll. "We don't sit on the fence” she said. “We have a strong position. We are in favour of a united community in Northern Ireland. That is our priority policy. We cannot have a united Ireland or a United Kingdom while this place remains divided” (Campbell, 2024). Long is half right. She’s correct in characterizing her party’s position that erasing division (i.e., achieving reconciliation) is a prerequisite for a united Ireland. But she’s mistaken to suggest that we cannot have a United Kingdom while there is social and political division. As Long and everyone else knows, the UK is the sovereign power in the north, so we do in fact have a United Kingdom even though serious divisions remain. Some people might even venture to propose that the British state in the north is a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation. The crucial point is that Long privileges UK over Irish sovereignty in her selective and contradictory use of the reconciliation argument. She sees reconciliation as a precondition for Irish sovereignty over the north, but does not reciprocate by requiring that reconciliation also be a precondition for continued British sovereignty. She believes British rule can persist in the absence of reconciliation, but Irish rule cannot begin until divisions are healed. She can continue living in a disunited United Kingdom but cannot contemplate entering a disunited united Ireland. In her glaring unfairness, Long is exactly like all the others who make this kind of argument. Irreconciliation is sufficient to block Irish unity but never a matter that should by itself rupture British sovereignty in the north. The universal imperative of “love thy neighbour” does not always or equally apply.
Andy Pollak’s position in this debate, though not as recent as that of Harris and Long, is useful to help flesh out what reconciliation-as-precondition means for the timing of Irish reunification. Recall that the conventional definition of a generation is a period of some 25 or 30 years, the average length of time between the birth of parents and their children. According to Pollak, reconciliation remains a utopian dream that the people administering the Agreement have failed to address meaningfully in the generation since 1998. Reconciliation work, he suggests, must continue for another generation at the minimum, but that is only the beginning. Pollak is silent on how many more years it will take to complete, or at least significantly advance, the process of reconciliation. But if 50 or 60 years on from the GFA represents just the start of the process, we’re probably looking at quite a long time. Pollak, then, will have a united Ireland in 100 or 200 years, ... maybe. The new centuries will doubtless witness people making the same kind of argument that Pollak is making now and that many made before him, which relegates reconciliation and Irish unity to a still more distant future. This timing unmasks the insidious agenda of the reconciliationistas: a united Ireland constantly pushed well beyond the political horizon. Reconciliation and therefore the opportunity for reunification will always be at least a generation away (Pollak, 2017).[3]
Pollak, like Naomi Long, also displays an astonishing hypocrisy in that the prospect of another 100 or 200 years of division in the north is not sufficient for him to begin questioning the maintenance of British rule in Ireland. The position shared by Pollak and Long has a related, unsavoury element: it privileges unionism over nationalism. It suggests that nationalist unhappiness with the constitutional status quo is infinitely tolerable, but the mere prospect of unionist discontent with a change in constitutional arrangements cannot be considered at all.
The goal of reconciliation is admirable. Many dedicated people will continue to advance it no matter what the constitutional status of the north. Political actors and commentators who selectively employ the notion of reconciliation as a weapon against Irish unity debase that commendable aim and disrespect those who work for it. The campaign for reunification is an opportunity for serious public engagement on the issue of reconciliation. That process will continue long after any realization of a united Ireland.
In the next installment, I’ll examine a bold but stealthy proposal for giving the north a blanket veto over the institutional forms, national symbols and policy priorities of a united Ireland.
Notes
[1] All direct quotations for which I do not cite a page or paragraph number are from internet documents that do not use a numbering system. Otherwise, I indicate the page, paragraph or column number of direct quotations.
[2] Justice Humphreys points out a major flaw in the SDLP’s position. In the constitutional conflict in Ireland, people and territory cannot be separated in the way the SDLP suggests: “the people are ... defined by reference to the territory” (Humphreys, 2018, p. 189).
[3] Consider briefly, for instance, the constant reiteration of the reconciliation argument over the past six or seven decades. Writing in 1957, Donal Barrington argued that reconciliation may take 50 years, or two generations (Barrington, 1957). In 1993, more than a generation after Barrington, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds said that achieving a united Ireland could take a generation (Mallie & McKittrick, 1996). Academic Roger Mac Ginty says that the 1998 Agreement was meant to defuse constitutional issues “for the foreseeable future” or for some “undetermined date in the future” (Mac Ginty, 2003, pp. 7 & 4, respectively). And now Pollak says, some 60 years after Barrington and a generation on from the Agreement, that reconciliation and thus a united Ireland is as far away as ever. That is, the unity of the people is no closer now than it was in 1957. According to the interminable timeline of the reconciliation argument, we’re right back where we started, exactly where Irish unity is destined ever to be—nowhere. Cox, like Aughey, is one of the few commentators invoking the reconciliation argument who openly admits that a focus on reconciliation rules out a united Ireland (Cox, 1985a & 1985b). In this admission, he is more candid than are the other reconciliationistas, but is equally implicated in employing a form of argument that subordinates nationalists to unionists. Sam McBride’s recent rendition of Winston Churchill’s position on the reunification of Ireland seemingly adds a new twist to the reconciliation game. Churchill, whose reputation as the great conciliator of Irish interests is apparently just being established, said: “It seemed to me that the passage of time might lead to the unity of Ireland itself in the only way in which that unity can be achieved, namely, by a union of Irish hearts”. And that union of hearts depends in turn on winning the freely-expressed consent of northern unionists to a united Ireland (McBride, 2025). In Churchill we again see the typical reconciliationista obfuscation of unity possibly occurring in “the passage of time”, which is attached to the usual condition of first securing unionist agreement. There is really nothing new here—except the discordant tying of Churchill’s name to what McBride incorrectly sees as a sincere attempt at Irish reconciliation—and all the flaws of the reconciliation argument that I’ve outlined apply equally to Churchill’s position.
References
Adams, D. (2024a). Address to Ireland’s Future Conference, Pathway to Change. SSE Arena. Belfast. 15 June. Podcast retrieved from.
Adams, D. (2024b). “Push for reconciliation faces opposition from the powerful.” Irish News. 24 June. Retrieved from.
Aughey, A. (1989). Under Siege: Ulster Unionism and the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.
Aughey, A. (1996). “Obstacles to Reconciliation in the South.” In Building Trust in Ireland. Studies Commissioned by the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, 2-51. Belfast: Blackstaff Press in association with the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation.
Barrington, D. (1957). “Uniting Ireland.” Studies 46:184 (Winter): 379-402.
BBC. (2022). “Ian Paisley: DUP MP introduces Referendum Supermajority bill.” BBC. 9 November. Retrieved from.
Bryson, J. and E. Thoburn. (2023). Restoring Northern Ireland’s Place in the Union. Centre for the Union, Constitutional Studies Group. 9 January. Retrieved from.
Campbell, G. (2023). “One unchanging reality for Secretary of State – Campbell.” DUP. 24 March. Retrieved from.
Campbell, N. (2024). “Heated debate as senior politicians put on the spot over border and budgets.” Belfast Telegraph. 28 June. Retrieved from the Factiva (Dow Jones) electronic database of news articles [cited below as Factiva].
Cox, W.H. (1985a). “Who Wants a United Ireland?” Government and Opposition 21:1 (January): 29-47.
Cox, W.H. (1985b). “The Politics of Irish Unification in the Irish Republic.” Parliamentary Affairs 38:4 (Autumn): 437-44.
Donaldson, J. (2023). “Progress must be built on solid foundations.” DUP. 15 April. Retrieved from.
Feeney, B. (2024). “Unity waffle shows that Harris couldn’t care less about north.” Irish News. 10 April. Retrieved from.
Foster, J.W. (Ed.). (1995). The Idea of the Union: Statements and Critiques in Support of the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Vancouver: Belcouver Press.
Foster, J.W., and W.B Smith. (Eds.). (2021). The Idea of the Union: Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Belcouver Press.
Humphreys, R. (2018). Beyond the Border: The Good Friday Agreement and Irish Unity after Brexit. Newbridge: Merrion Press.
Kennedy, D. (2009). “The Case against the Belfast Agreement.” In The Northern Ireland Question: The Peace Process and the Belfast Agreement. ed. B. Barton and P.J. Roche, 246-264. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mac Ginty, R. (2003). “Constitutional Referendums and Ethnonational Conflict: The Case of Northern Ireland.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9:2 (Summer): 1-22.
Mallie, E. & D. McKittrick. (1996). The Fight for Peace: The Secret Story Behind the Irish Peace Process. London: Heinemann.
Manley, J. (2024). “New man Harris fears to speak of uniting Ireland.” Irish News. 10 April. Retrieved from.
McBride, S. (2025). “Nationalists should have taken Churchill's advice on Irish unity.” Sunday Independent. 19 January. Retrieved from Factiva.
Pollak, A. (2017). “The anti-colonialist bullies versus the reconciliation persuaders.” 2 Irelands Together Blog. 25 September. Retrieved from.
Todd, J. (1990). “Northern Nationalist Political Culture.” Irish Political Studies 5:1 (January): 31-44.
Young, D. (2024). “Cost not main factor in United Ireland debate says incoming taoiseach.” Irish News. 8 April. Retrieved from.
Wilson, J. (2024). “Harris ‘irritated’ Northern Ireland remarks ‘taken out of context’.” Newstalk. 16 April. Retrieved from.
⏩ Mike Burke has lectured in Politics and Public Administration in Canada for over 30 years.
 &p[summary]=Mike Burke ✍ David Adams , a former member of the UDA who helped to deliver the loyalist ceasefire and served as a negotiator in the Good F...&p[url]=https://www.thepensivequill.com/2025/02/beguiling-constitutional-narratives-4.html&p[images][0]=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3PqvwCgZI-O32aJN7bAFZt-TBVLRFThGcGjuLTcc0DJvCpLBvnRbN44cU4e8HjkWpVIURJAUjIHT7Y8FdtS_Z2Q8WWLDwQF9vmg0TW3a2_behiGW3hX5eIBobH5jYPYZTPzEngx8HjscsamrkbGe6BeG_8O-24ozxMqxK0PZutJnrqw5K0sTyLyCOm2M/s1600/01%20Quill%20Hand.png){kind=link}
I'd be more interested in what this UI would actually look like on a day to day basis, instead of the usual UI being an end point with no thought nor plan given the light of day on what it looks like. Why would anyone vote to do away with the Status Quo for a big unknown?
ReplyDeleteI don't recall anyone voting 'in' the 'status quo'. I think it might have been imposed on us........
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair point but I am not asking a question on how we arrived at where we are, I am asking for a description of the why, what and how a UI would look like "differently" from the Status Quo.
Delete