Thanks to the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland is a better place
Twenty-five years on, its politics are rarely deadly. But they are depressingly dysfunctional
ON THE COLD April day in 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was struck, George Mitchell told Northern Ireland’s leaders that he had a dream. The former American senator had missed most of the first six months of his son’s life in cajoling unionists and nationalists to reach a settlement. One day, he said, he wanted to sit with the boy in the public gallery of the Stormont Assembly, watching former enemies govern together. Fourteen years later he did just that. The ministerial statement they sat through was “dry as dust”, he said. “But it was music to my ears, and I thought it wonderful to hear.”
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “A good Good Friday”
From the April 8th 2023 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionMore from Britain
British “equal value” lawsuits have become an absurd denial of markets
The gavel takes on the invisible hand
Britain’s plan to shake up school inspections pleases no one
Labour replaces a simple but controversial system with a complex, clunky one
Worries about Britain’s construction crunch are overdone
Stop worrying and learn to love the labour market
Milton Keynes shows the rest of Britain how to grow
NIMBYs don’t have the upper hand everywhere
Oxford and Cambridge are too small
Linking up the cities, and letting them grow, could power Britain’s economy
Wanted: a Britain economics writer
An opportunity to join the staff of The Economist