The resumption of devolution in Northern Ireland – scheduled for tomorrow after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) reached a deal with the UK Government earlier this week – marks a big moment: for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland, there will be a nationalist First Minister.
Sinn Fein, a party still viewed by the security services as being in lockstep with the IRA, became the largest party at the 2022 Assembly Election. As a result, their leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, is entitled to be nominated as the Province’s First Minister. Irish nationalists and republicans are now masters of a state designed for their exclusion.
Sinn Fein has yet to apologise for the role it played in sustaining or prolonging the Troubles
There will no doubt be certain mirth that the daughter of an IRA prisoner is now ‘in charge’; this is despite the post of Deputy First Minister, set to be taken by the DUP, carrying identical, ‘co-equal powers’. But
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