“others might be forgiven for thinking that you are slightly bonkers.”

Senior UUP member Chris McGimpsey addresses Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams’ laughable World Tour for Irish Unity at the Guardian’s Comment is Free.

The difficulty that Adams faces is that under the Good Friday Agreement the Irish government gave up its territorial claim over the people and territory of Northern Ireland and accepted that a united Ireland is not a right, but can only come about once the majority of the population of Northern Ireland demands it. Northern Ireland remains within the United Kingdom and Martin McGuinness, a former member of the Army Council of the Provisional IRA, is our deputy first minister. He and his Sinn Féin colleagues are helping the rest of us (DUP, UUP and SDLP) to administer British rule in Northern Ireland.

There has been a final result to the IRA’s armed struggle and they lost. Democracy won. The Irish and British governments won. More importantly, the people of Northern Ireland won. Comments likes those made by Gerry Adams this week in the “Mother of Parliaments” are simply a crude attempt to persuade Sinn Féin supporters in Northern Ireland that quest for a United Ireland goes on and is achievable. Everyone else in Ireland knows this to be nonsense.

Well, Adams can try, but the only viable way forward is civilisation. Meanwhile, there’s a different conversation Gerry Adams needs to address..

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