TO SAY THAT THE BRITISH AND THE IRISH HAVE A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP would be an understatement. Neither side can bring themselves to end a feud that has long since lost its raison d’être. Instead, we continue to snipe, to provoke, to begrudge and be begrudged. And we pay little heed to those brave individuals who try to set the record straight while politicians who reignite the old enmities are rewarded.
Why, for example, does Leo Varadkar, the , declare that “there will be a united Ireland in my lifetime”? Because he fears Sinn Feín, now leading in the polls. Mr Varadkar makes no mention of the principle of consent. It is, for him, merely a matter of how well the Republic would treat “a minority [of] roughly a million people who are British”. Well, we know what happened after 1922. In the 25 years after independence, the proportion of Protestants in the South almost halved, from 10 per cent to 6
