A LOT of very important people, who should know better, appear not to understand the Good Friday Agreement.

This was the settlement in 1998 by which the political management of Northern Ireland would be handled after ceasefires by the major paramilitary organisations which had killed thousands of people in the previous thirty years.

Those groups were provided with a route into political power and the fulfilment of their aspirations by political means. So the IRA’s political ally, Sinn Féin, now shares power with the Democratic Unionist Party. The loyalist armed groups never managed to grow politically but continue to recruit and operate as criminal gangs.

Within the Good Friday Agreement there is a provision for a future referendum on whether Northern Ireland should leave the United Kingdom and join the Irish Republic, creating a single jurisdiction for the whole island of Ireland.

So republicans gain nothing by killing and bombing to advance their cause since a united Ireland is there for the taking when enough people want it. That’s the crucial bit that a lot of people don’t seem to understand.

On his first trip to Northern Ireland as prime minister, Andy Burnham was asked if he thought there would likely be such a referendum soon. He replied that it was ‘off the table’. His argument was that we had already seen........

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