Irish and British futures are codependent and entangled

Paul Gillespie - The Irish Times - 19/04
Worldview: Running through contemporary debates is a battle between those who say reconciliation should come before constitutional change and those who argue for the reverse

The geography of the British-Irish question is commonly expressed in terms of North-South and east-west relations following the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Nationalists prioritise North-South relations and unionists east-west ones.

But we need to unravel and then reweave these terms for a better understanding of the relations they describe.

The Irish-British question differs from the British-Irish one, just as their South-North and west-east counterparts do. Their perspectives vary because of differing geographies, histories, cultures and scales. Nationalism and unionism do not have the same meanings in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. That helps explain the many confusions and ambiguities of politics across these islands.

Most of the shared commonalities arise from the greater demographic and imperial power employed ...
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