A measured, IMO, editorial in The Guardian on the events leading up to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis which it describes as “a celebration [which turned] into a very desperate damage limitation exercise.”I’ll just note the concluding paragraph –
Yet if republicans are tempted to think that the worst is now over, they are surely deceiving themselves. The most probable effect of the recent events is not that Sinn Féin is finished. It is that Sinn Féin is stuck. That does not mean that they should be treated as pariahs. Attempts to rule out discussions with Sinn Féin are misplaced. But it does mean that such discussions will not be worth much while the republicans remain equivocal about violence and respect for the law. Future movement in the peace process requires the kind of decisive breach between Sinn Féin and the IRA that the voters of the south – to say nothing of the voters of the north – rightly want to see. Mr Adams seems to recognise what the problem is. Now he has to show that he understands the solution.
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