The late Thomas P O’Neill, or Tip – Congress Speaker during the Reagan era – was probably the most Irish of all modern American politicians.
Tip was Irish to his core with his ruddy face, bulbous nose and a mane of unruly white hair. His sparring with Reagan was legendary.
O’Neill said of Reagan that he was a woeful President “but to give Reagan his due he would have made one hell of a king!”
Behind it all, they became friends and bonded over the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
O’Neill encouraged Reagan to tell his ‘special friend’ Mrs Thatcher to sign up to it and she obliged.
Reagan was every bit as Irish as Biden.
Biden and his congressional colleagues still hold the whip hand on Anglo-American relations when it comes to Ireland.
The faux loyalist outrage at Biden’s off the cuff remarks that "if you're wearing orange, you're not welcome in here" seems to have overlooked the taunts of a former Republican president.
President Reagan told the Washington Press Corps a joke about an Irish lad who had just arrived in New York and was met by one of New York’s Finest – also Irish. The newly-arrived migrant was struggling to cross the road. The friendly cop said: “When the lights change from red to orange and then green, you must cross on green.”
Once safely across the busy New York street, the new émigré remarked to the policeman: “Thanks, but thon orange signal doesn’t allow for much time for the Protestants to cross.”
It’s one of the great ironies that while Northern Ireland unionists rightly bask in the glory of their illustrious Presbyterian forbearers founding the United States of America, they appear to have forgotten those same predecessors were unshackling themselves from ties to Britain. It’s little wonder the unionist selling point doesn't resonate.
Unionism is equally a puzzlement in France and in other parts of Europe.
The folly of throwing their lot in with zealot English nationalists and Brexit purists has done even more damage to the reputation of unionism. The madcap idea proposed by some Brexiters that the DUP should contest elections in Britain would put them on a power with the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Political unionism needs to smell the slurry.
The most damaging thing to the union right now is the leadership of unionism.
The hyperbole about eating grass before compromising over the Windsor Framework will never come to pass. There’s not a politician in Ireland who ever suffered from indigestion by eating their own words.
Paisley and everything that followed showed the DUP’s capacity for being able to wholly swallow former policy shibboleths is as robust that of an agricultural anaerobic digester.
The DUP claim not to be impressed by former and current presidents and prime ministers showing up in Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and the stability it brought. However, this national and international attention is not lost on job creators, businesses and FDI companies. The EU invested heavily in the peace process via the third sector and post the GFA, foreign and domestic businesses did too.
Northern Ireland is in an immeasurably much better place in 2023 than it was in 1998 and a cacophony of noise from bitter partisan voices can’t change that.
Tip O’Neill succeeded JF Kennedy to Congress. Kennedy’s great-nephew is now US economic envoy to Ireland. Another sign of positive international intervention and goodwill.
Tip’s favourite piece of advice was “All politics is local”. It’s a truism.
The forthcoming elections won’t propel Michelle O’Neill into the post of First Minister, or create a third tribe as hoped by the NIO’s eternal dreamers, or even save the blushes of Jeffrey Donaldson in doing a post-framework deal.
These are local government elections and as such those in situ should be judged on what they have done or not done. After all, it's the only form of government which works here. And that’s an achievement of sorts.
