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To understand why the UK failed to see the Brexit NI problem, it is worth asking why no one in London ever talks about John Hume.
Below is one of Ireland's most senior diplomats. Hume's legacy is central to how the Irish state has perceived itself since 1998 (GFA thread)..
Below is one of Ireland's most senior diplomats. Hume's legacy is central to how the Irish state has perceived itself since 1998 (GFA thread)..
When RTE had a public vote less than a decade ago on Ireland's Greatest person, Hume beat Michael Collins, the man who won independence and founded the state. Hume is the moral and intellectual architect of the GFA, not David Trimble - who was courageous enough to do the deal...
But cannot claim to have worked out the three strands - internal power sharing, North-South, East-West - or built up US and EU goodwill over years. Or, more than anything, an interpretation of tragic ethno-national conflict on one island that required more than binary victory...
All of this has been internalised by the Irish state, and even if you disagree with it - and I don't - the UK state should have seen how profoundly Brexit was jeopardising something fundamental to a continuing EU member state and its citizens, many of whom are also UK citizens..
Hume is one of the few UK MPs to ever win a Nobel peace prize, and his broad architecture of peace is the one that the EU is trying to preserve via the backstop. But I don't think I've heard his name mentioned once at the dispatch box since 2016...
Not to sound po-faced, but it all matters.
