One road has been closed, but another is opening,†said Gerry Adams, then leader of Sinn Féin (the political arm of the IRA), when the Good Friday Agreements were signed. The path that the Republicans took for granted in 1998 was that of machine guns and bombs, because they were already so infiltrated by British intelligence agents that they were going nowhere. And what they started to walk was that of ballots and ballot boxes.
It is a path that can take them to the top. They already won the last regional elections in Ulster, and were the most voted party in the Republic of Ireland. If it is not in power it is because its two centre-right rivals, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (successors of the two great fathers of the country, Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins), forged a peculiar coalition in which their respective leaders they take turns as taoiseach (prime minister).
Sinn Féin has a long tradition in the Republic of links to the IRA, but in recent years it has become the dominant political force, with the support of 31%, according to the latest poll, especially among young people, fed up with clientelism, an exorbitant cost of living (housing is not plentiful and Dublin has become as expensive as New York or Los Angeles), the deterioration of healthcare, education and public services. He does not mention the crusade for reunification, which is taken for granted, but it is a subject he prefers not to touch on so as not to hurt sensitivities.
When more than a century has passed since the partition in 1921, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the Republic are in favor of reincorporating the six counties of Ulster that Michael Collins ceded to the United Kingdom as a Protestant stronghold. But it is not an obsession, and the interest is diluted quite a bit when you speculate on the cost that would mean, the equivalent or more of what the former West Germany paid to absorb the East. “It’s a nice idea, but it’s not about us breaking even,” says Michael Sexton, manager of a car dealership in a prosperous suburb of the capital.
Although Sinn Féin is the party with the most votes in both the north and south of the island, reunification will still take time. According to the Good Friday agreements, to call a referendum it is necessary that “a clear majority wants it”, and that moment does not seem imminent. In Ulster, only 27% of the population say they want it, while 50% opt to remain part of the United Kingdom. Among unionists, by an overwhelming percentage, as you would expect. A little more surprising is that Catholics are more divided, with one in five preferring the status quo.
That this is the case has a lot to do with the Brexit commitment, which allows the Northern Irish to enjoy the best of both worlds, with one foot in the UK and the other in the EU. Despite the bureaucracy involved in being part of the single market, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, especially for entrepreneurs. Unionists see it as a threat to their identity and a push towards integration into the Republic for economic reasons. But all of this is simmering. And the nationalists, while consolidating their power on both sides of the border, are in no hurry.
This is the landscape that US President Joe Biden will find when he first visits Belfast, for the 25th anniversary of the peace accords, and then the Republic, where he will address Parliament and look for the roots of which he is so proud. The British are dying of envy, because he has turned down the invitation to the coronation at the beginning of May of King Charles III, claiming that at the age of eighty he is not in a position to make two transatlantic trips in such a short time. “Washington has a special relationship, but not with London, as we like to brag, but with Dublin,” wrote a Telegraph commentator.
Biden has made it clear to the last leaders of the United Kingdom that he does not like their anti-Europeanism and threats to breach the Brexit agreements. And he didn’t decide to visit Belfast until Johnson and Liz Truss disappeared from the scene, and the more diplomatic Rishi Sunak changed his tune. But there is a long way from praising royalty, and Eisenhower started the tradition of American presidents not attending coronations. The English are like Othello. Lope de Vega already said it: “There is no greater glory than love, no greater punishment than jealousy.”
