A handicap of most Northern Irish politicians is that they lack experience of politics elsewhere
Ben Habib in his opinion piece (‘Protocol Bill is a con and does not advance the unionist cause,’ June 15, see link below) is correct in his penetrating analysis of the “political sleight of hand that is the NI Protocol Bill”.
On the facing page Austen Morgan (see link below) is correct in his perceptive analysis (‘EU misuse of deal is biggest threat to NI stability since 98’). The Dublin negotiators made sure that Michel Barnier and his Hibernophile acolytes adopted the Irish nationalist/ republican line in giving a perverted version of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) now backed fully by US President Biden and his fellow misty-eyed Irish Americans.
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Hide AdThe latent function and deliberate semantic ambiguity of the GFA is fulfilling its intention to advance relentlessly the creation of a unitary Irish Republic.
A major handicap of most (if not all Northern Irish politicians) is that they lack experience of politics elsewhere.
In the 1960s I lived in Central Africa and witnessed the collapse of the Central African Federation and the defeat of Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front leading to the creation of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
Sir Roy Welensky (a former engine driver on Rhodesian Railways) and last premier of the federation stated after negotiations with London politicians that the federation was “destroyed not by our avowed enemies but by those who called themselves our friends and believed in what we had built. They killed it in the dark and by stealth and wept crocodile tears as they finished the deed”.
George McNally, Londonderry BT47
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Hide Ad• Ruth Dudley Edwards June 14: Boris has flaws but I still hope he’ll unlock protocol
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Hide Ad• Peter Robinson June 14: DUP should stay out of Stormont until protocol bill is fully enacted
• Owen Polley June 13: Billy Bingham should have had a knighthood
• Ben Lowry June 11: BBC NI is downgrading its Twelfth output but pretending otherwise