DONALD TRUMP MADE for an uncomfortable harbinger of Irish Unity during his visit to Ireland, but it doesn’t take a very stable genius to know that Ireland should be united.

The intervention will have served many purposes for the US president: controlling the media narrative and playing to the Irish American lobby ahead of the mid-term elections, but it also exposes a geopolitical reality – Ireland has many friends waiting in the wings to support unification. If only the government had the courage to accept it.

Irish revolutionaries understood more than a century ago that Ireland’s constitutional future could not be separated from international politics. The first Dáil established a foreign service before Ireland had an internationally recognised state, while De Valera spent 18 months seeking recognition for the Irish Republic, raising funds and mobilising Irish America. Though the international recognition they sought remained elusive until after the Anglo-Irish Treaty, that vital groundwork has gone on to pay dividends ever since.

Decades later, John Hume picked up the baton and drummed up support in Washington to intervene in Northern Ireland’s conflict. Relationships were built. Tip O’Neill pushed Reagan, Clinton made Northern Ireland a priority, enlisting US Senator George Mitchell to mediate peace talks to resounding success.

Getting Ireland over........

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