Letters: July 2021
Altered states
Feargal Cochrane’s essay (“Unionism, nationalism and unrequited love,” June) correctly diagnoses one of the features of Northern Ireland’s unique and occasionally tragic predicament at the crossroads of two states: its ambivalent relationships with those two “patron” countries Ireland and Britain.
But what happens when one of those states is fundamentally altering itself, as the UK currently is? Elsewhere in the same issue, Tom Clark asks important questions about the acceptability of monarchy in the 21st century, and Jill Rutter asks whether Whitehall and Westminster are equipped to rebuild trust in governance. Citizens in Northern Ireland are…