Good friday agreement

Wednesday

Nick Parker

Starmer must drop this terrible Troubles bill

From our UK edition

As we mark another anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, we should be less inclined to celebrate and more disposed to worry. What was achieved on 10 April 1998 was remarkable. It worked not because it resolved everything, but because it deliberately did not, allowing former enemies to move forward without settling every question of the past. Yet it depended on consistent political leadership to embed its spirit into a society divided by grievance. That leadership is now faltering, with the risk of the past being weaponised in ways the Agreement was designed to avoid. The struggle for a united Ireland continues. One of the Agreement’s greatest achievements was to move it from the gunman to the ballot box. But legitimacy cuts both ways.

Wednesday

Oliver Wiseman

Joe Biden’s Ireland trip is all about Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s Ireland trip is all about Joe Biden Half a century since he was sworn in as a US senator, the Biden brand is a well-established series of safe bets: a fondness for aviator sunglasses, a hankering for chocolate chip ice cream. Also high on the list: conspicuous displays of Irishness. The second Irish-American president is fond of quoting Heaney and Yeats. He may be the only teetotaler who enjoys St. Patrick’s Day, which he says is his favorite holiday.  And so much about Biden’s trip to Ireland this week is unsurprising. After landing in Belfast last night, the president this morning had a quick cuppa with British prime minister Rishi Sunak and gave a speech to mark twenty-five years since the Good Friday Agreement.

joe biden ireland

Tuesday

Ian Acheson

Violent extremists won’t spoil Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland

From our UK edition

What can violent extremists do to wreck Joe Biden’s first visit to Northern Ireland? The answer is precious little. The President’s visit has been denied the electoral fairy dust of a functioning Executive as he blows in to hail 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement. While that might disappoint some local politicians keen to bathe in some harmless warm platitudes, it will be less of a security headache for those charged with keeping him safe. So what of the known arrangements and the risks? Biden will land at Belfast International Airport this evening and be taken, one assumes by air, to a venue in the city for some glad-handing.

Friday

James Forsyth

How to fix the protocol

From our UK edition

The blame game between London and Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol obscures the fact that there are solutions waiting to be found. There are, as I say in the Times today, ways to reform the protocol and better protect the Good Friday Agreement while not threatening the integrity of the single market. Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable and would better position it to withstand the undoubted pressures it will come under when the EU and UK start to diverge their regulations.  The first of these is a trusted trader scheme for food. This would allow registered suppliers to move goods — including, yes, sausages — from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without checks.

Friday

Ian Acheson

Are loyalists plotting a return to violence?

From our UK edition

What are we to make of Loyalist paramilitary groups withdrawing support for the Good Friday Agreement over the invidious trade border that now exists in the Irish sea? The Loyalist Communities Council, a group that represents the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Red Hand Commando, has written to Boris Johnson and Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, warning of 'permanent destruction' of the 1998 peace agreement unless changes are made to the Brexit agreement.  'If you or the EU is not prepared to honour the entirety of the agreement then you will be responsible for the permanent destruction of the agreement,' David Campbell, the chairman of the LCC, said.

Wednesday

Ian Acheson

How Joe Biden can be a true friend to the Irish

From our UK edition

On this day in 1974, a body was recovered in quiet fields near the Country Tyrone village of Clogher, hard against Northern Ireland’s frontier. It was that of Cormac McCabe, the headmaster of a nearby secondary school, who was also a part-time officer in the Ulster Defence Regiment, locally raised ‘home battalions’ of the British Army. McCabe had been kidnapped the day before, having crossed the border to have lunch in Monaghan town with his wife and disabled daughter. Exposed and defenceless, he was the softest of targets for the Provisional IRA terrorists who abducted him, shot him in the head and then dumped him in a bog field.