Editorial: Senator Chuck Schumer has seemed to endorse Sinn Fein view that Northern Ireland is a contested name, when in fact the title reflects a country recognised by the Belfast Agreement that he often cites

The Democratic Party senator Chuck Schumer gave a telling speech to the Ireland Funds dinner in Washington DC this week.

Mr Schumer, who is one of the most influential politicians in America, scolded the DUP in a way that US politicians would not dare criticise Sinn Fein (or not since the late Republican Party senator John McCain criticised SF in the aftermath of the 2004 Northern Bank Robber and 2005 Robert McCartney killing).

Mr Schumer’s criticism of the DUP was not the most revealing part of his speech however. After all, a succession of politicians have singled out the DUP for criticism for its response to the NI Protocol including even UK Conservative and Unionist secretaries of state, such as Chris Heaton-Harris. The DUP was even singled out for criticism by a predecessor of Mr Heaton-Harris, Julian Smith, at the end of the long SF collapse of Stormont (for not moving fast enough to endorse the deal that rewarded that collapse).

So that is par for the course. Unionists can always be criticised openly. Irish republicans cannot.

More significant was the way in which Mr Schumer alternated his references to this province between Northern Ireland and the North.

He cannot be unaware that this is the Sinn Fein term. It will not utter the name of the country to which it aspires to be first minister.

Thus Mr Schumer, who is one of the transatlantic chorus that demands the upholding of the Belfast Agreement, was helping to make Northern Ireland a contested name, that is best dealt with like alternating between Londonderry and Derry.

To accept that the name NI is contentious is to subtly endorse a subversion of the 1998 agreement because it ignores the central part of that deal, that Northern Ireland exists and is part of the UK unless a majority decides otherwise.

Mr Schumer’s speech was an illustration of the assaults on unionism.