Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, would not, perhaps, win prizes for her in depth knowledge of sectarian politics in her patch – in an interview for the House magazine she said she had never realised that nationalists don’t vote for unionists, and vice versa (though that, actually, may change, given how Sinn Fein’s pro abortion, pro gay marriage gives Catholic voters the creeps) – but she’s on the ball in one respect.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has been out of action since last year on the basis of a standoff between the DUP and Sinn Fein based on one comprehensible issue (SF took a dim view over Arlene Foster’s hair-raising handling of green subsidies) and a frankly incomprehensible one – Sinn Fein taking a very hard line on the Irish language, despite the fact that the only place in Ulster where it is anyone’s first language is Donegal, which is actually across the border in the Irish Republic.
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