In the Irish Times, Patrick Smyth rains on “this national parade, The Handshake-fest”. Don’t get me wrong. This is not to say that The Handshake was not a “good thing”. It was. Belatedly, 14 years after the genuinely “historic” Belfast Agreement was signed, marking not only Sinn Féin’s renunciation of coercion as a means of uniting Ireland but also, crucially, a new set of relationships on and between these islands, the party takes another incremental step down that road. Masters … Continue reading The Handshake-fest: “Ho, hum.”