Trump calls Irish unity \u2018fantastic\u2019 while visiting golf resort<\/a><\/p>\nTrump\u2019s statement Saturday that Irish unification would be \u201cfantastic\u201d touched a live rail in the histories of Britain and Ireland that lies behind a century of division and decades of violence. Reaction, for and against, was swift.<\/p>\n
Irish Prime Minister Miche\u00e1l Martin urged politicians to \u201ckeep a calm perspective\u201d on Trump’s comments, and called some of the responses an overreaction.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland\u2019s status has been divisive for a century<\/p>\n
When Ireland won independence from Britain a century ago and became a self-governing Roman Catholic-majority country, a six-county region in the north, which then had a Protestant majority, remained part of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland was split between two main communities: nationalists \u2014 most of them Catholic \u2014 who desired union with the rest of Ireland, and largely Protestant unionists, who wanted to stay British. In the late 1960s, tensions exploded into \u201cThe Troubles,\u201d three decades of violence involving paramilitary groups on both sides and British troops left some 3,600 people dead in bombings, shootings and other attacks.<\/p>\n
A 1998 peace accord that the U.S. was instrumental in striking largely ended the violence, but left Northern Ireland\u2019s ultimate status unresolved by allowing people to identify as Irish, British or both. The Good Friday Agreement allows for a vote on unification if polls indicate it would likely pass, a threshold the U.K. government says has not been met. Ireland would also have to approve the change in a referendum.<\/p>\n
Peace in Northern Ireland has largely endured, but divisions remain deep over the conflict\u2019s legacy and the region\u2019s competing identities. Despite Trump\u2019s view, the issue of whether Northern Ireland\u2019s future lies with the U.K. or Ireland remains unresolved.<\/p>\n
The UK sought to downplay the remarks<\/p>\n
Trump said Sunday that his comments were \u201conly my opinion,\u201d but also that he\u2019d had \u201cso much support.\u201d The British government sought to downplay them.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Andy Burnham\u2019s office pointed back to his statement last week that he was \u201c100%\u201d behind the Good Friday accord and that the U.K. would only consider allowing a referendum \u201cwhen public opinion has changed to the point where the call has to be considered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opposition U.K. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said Trump was \u201cshooting from the hip as usual, just like he did with Greenland and Canada becoming the 51st state. This sort of loose talk about the future of democratic countries is deeply unhelpful and creates unnecessary tension.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks also were criticized by pro-British unionist politicians in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, posted on X that \u201cNorthern Ireland\u2019s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irish nationalists welcomed Trump\u2019s intervention<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s remarks were striking because previous U.S. presidents \u2013 even those with Irish roots, like Joe Biden \u2013 have avoided commenting directly on the subject of unification.<\/p>\n
Sinn Fein, a political party that seeks unification and was allied during the Troubles with the Irish Republican Army, said it approved of Trump\u2019s comments, although the left-leaning party has little in common with him politically.<\/p>\n
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Ireland touts record investments in US economy<\/a><\/p>\nGerry Adams, who was Sinn Fein leader when the Good Friday accord was signed, said the \u201cremarks by President Trump on the issue of Irish unity are welcome, even though we profoundly differ with him on many other matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
All the main Irish political parties support unification on paper, but Sinn Fein says Martin’s centrist Irish government has failed to prepare for it to happen.<\/p>\n
Martin called some of the response to Trump’s comments \u201can overreaction,” noting the president had previously asked whether there would be a \u201cmerger\u201d between Ireland and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be a surprise. He takes a different sort of perspective on things, we know that,\u201d Martin said Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe in Irish unity,” he added. “Many political parties in the Republic believe in our unity. But we also of course believe in the Good Friday Agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. President Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on his support for a united Ireland, saying it makes sense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-769631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}