As I write talks to deliver durable, stable and progressive devolved government in Northern Ireland just collapsed.
This firmly establishes that we now face Brexit without a functioning executive to guide us through negotiations. This means that the 56 per cent remain vote in Northern Ireland will likely fall on deaf ears and the contemptuous attitude that we have come to know from this Tory government will only solidify existing grievances that risk destabilising our peace process.
Students and young people simply cannot allow our future to be frittered away due to the sheer incompetence of our political leaders and so now is the time we must speak up the loudest. It is my view that political parties, civil society and individual leaders must come together and decide how Northern Ireland is to be represented throughout the Article 50 process. We need a democratically elected body, one which brings civil society together and generates political leadership truly representative of us during these tumultuous times.
As our future is uncertain it is fair to speculate that withdrawal from the European Union will require some serious revisions to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which may prove near impossible to achieve without a rerun of the 1998 referendum.
Leaving the European Union means that the foundations of the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland may also be at stake. This is largely due to the fact that the rights and obligations arising from the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union were influential, if not absolutely integral, to the GFA and the 1998 Northern Ireland Act.
Despite this the challenges we face are not insurmountable. There remains a great deal of optimism and hope from students and young people – all we need now is mature political leadership that listens and gives us a say in the shaping of our own future. We want politicians to deliver for us a future that is worth investing in and staying for. Priority at this time should be given to investment in third level education and apprenticeships if we are to encourage our students and young people to stay here in a post-Brexit world. The executive has underperformed in every respect when it comes to investing in and protecting our FE and HE sector. Brexit also poses a set of unique and extremely worrying barriers to education for Irish and EU students – our relationship with the EU and whether there will be a hard border with the Republic are of prime concern at this time.
GARY SPEDDING
Derry
Election results have stirred more unionist paranoia
Recent election results seem to have stirred more paranoia, confusion and panic among unionists than the ranting of any tin hut cleric could ever have done.
Harry Stephenson (March 24) yearns for the rest of our country to come back under British rule. Oliver Cromwell was 400 years ago. But the arming of unionist murder gangs by the British government is very recent. Does he really believe that the citizens of Drogheda would want to go back to all of that? And all that spilling of Irish blood at the Somme and the streets of Dublin, which was all caused by the world’s worst pariah state who are permanently at war – Britain. Does he really believe that people south of the border would want to be dragged back into Britain’s wars?
Does he think that Irish Catholics would give up their right to hold public office or have an anti-Catholic Head of State that they cannot vote for?
And what about those regions in Mayo, Galway and Cork who suffered most when more than 2,000,000 perished in a famine which was caused by the theft of our agricultural produce? Does Harry really believe that people down there would hand back complete control of their lives to Tories in London?
And Trevor Ringland (March 24) labours his forlorn dream that the partition of our country is a viable option. Does he really not know that this sectarian statelet has always been in crisis since it was set up at the point of British guns in 1921?
And after what the nationalist community have endured since then, does he really believe that we would tolerate the partition of our country if we had the power to change it? Does he really believe that we would settle for anything less than the reunification and total independence of our country?
These guys seem to be not just confused and paranoid but delirious.
JACK DUFFIN
Belfast BT11
Israel – only democracy in Middle East
Eugene Parte (March 14) fires off the most lurid allegations imaginable about Israel.
The aim is to blacken Israel’s reputation on the principle that ‘mud sticks’.
While Eugene fails to give examples or statistics to back up his allegations, let me confine myself to one basic fact.
According to Freedom House, an independent monitor of political rights around the world, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
In fact, it accords Israel the best possible score for political rights (one out of seven) and the second best for civil liberties (two out of seven).
Sadly, its neighbours are among the most repressive regimes on this earth.
According to Freedom House, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Gaza under Hamas and the Palestinian Authority under the PLO, are not free and withhold the most basic civil liberties from their people.
So if correspondents like Eugene were genuinely interested in a better future for the Palestinians they would at least occasionally turn their attention to human rights abuses in the Arab world.
STEVEN JAFFE
London
Gloating Gerry Adams
Arlene deserved criticism over RHI and the Irish Language comments, even though SF were backing the DUP on RHI up until Martin McGuinness was taken ill.
SF leader Adams played a blinder, putting smiling Michelle in charge, against Arlene and by SF focusing on LGBT, gay marriage and ‘equality’ issues, their vote soared.
Now, Gerry is playing the Green card, calling for a united Ireland, border poll and acting triumphalist.
He spoke of breaking unionists and this was his agenda all along, sadly helped by some DUP attitudes and unionist apathy and confusion.
Standing several unionist candidates in areas such as North and South Belfast is now silly and does nothing for equality, liberal unionism or progressive loyalism.
Nationalist/ republicans now smile with glee, quoting demographics as if accident of birth was a political win for Sinn Féin and Irish republicanism.
PAUL GREEN
Whitehouse, Co Antrim
Marching towards dystopia
Democracy is mob rule. It allows 51 per cent of the population to deny the rights of the other 49. (Thomas Jefferson)
The sheer lack of floating voters in Northern Ireland has underlined how our politics has become just like American presidential elections –polarised, tub-thumping, opinion-by-numbers and PR excessive. This media circus has usurped democracy and has allowed image rather than policy to become the deciding factor in who to vote for. It’s almost like the X-Factor at times.
Ochlocracy has allowed the elites to tailor politicians both on the left and the right to continue this march towards dystopia. We’re no different. Consensus politics is dead and buried.
The British and Irish governments both want another election. Why?
DESMOND DEVLIN
Ardboe, Co Tyrone
