{"id":401620,"date":"2026-03-24T16:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401620\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T16:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T16:07:13","slug":"reasonable-prospect-of-a-united-ireland-within-20-years-says-nicola-sturgeon-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/401620\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Reasonable\u2019 prospect of a united Ireland within 20 years, says Nicola Sturgeon \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Kingdom<\/a> \u201cin its current form is pretty dead\u201d and it is \u201creasonable\u201d there might be a united Ireland within 20 years, the former first minister of Scotland<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

Speaking at the Magheramorne Literary Festival in Co Antrim<\/a> on Sunday, Nicola Sturgeon<\/a> told The Irish Times she \u201cused to think the independent Scotland would come first, but now I\u2019m not so sure. Maybe a united Ireland will come before that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said following the elections to the Scottish and Welsh<\/a> parliaments in May, \u201cit\u2019s not guaranteed but it is highly likely that three of the four nations of the United Kingdom will be led by nationalists, SNP<\/a> in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and of course Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> here in the north of Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen, a few years from now, and I really hope this doesn\u2019t happen, it\u2019s not impossible though, that England will be led by a very different kind of nationalist, and I just don\u2019t think that [the UK] holds together.\u201d <\/p>\n

Accepting \u201cI am coming at this from a very partial point of view\u201d, she said \u201cI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s right that we try to hold it together, because I actually think the relationship between the four countries of the UK might be better if we have a bit more equality in how we\u2019re governed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the example of British Irish Council summits, which are attended by the Irish and UK governments and the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland<\/a> as well as the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, she said the \u201cplayers that sit around that table … will all continue to sit around that table, even if we\u2019re in a slightly different formulation. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I do believe in certainly 20 years at the outset, I think Scotland will be independent, I think Wales will be more autonomous, maybe independent, I think, and it\u2019s not a question for me, I think it\u2019s a reasonable prospect that Ireland might be reunified,\u201d Sturgeon said.<\/p>\n

\"SturgeonSturgeon speaking at the festival. Photograph: Magheramorne Estate <\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging interview about her memoir, Frankly, with the festival curator, the author and former BBC political correspondent Stephen Walker, Sturgeon spoke of her recently-discovered Northern Irish ancestry and her friendship with the former IRA leader and later, deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness.<\/p>\n

Growing up in the west of Scotland, she said Northern Ireland always felt \u201cquite close\u201d but discovered a few years ago \u201cI actually have Northern Irish ancestry, my great, great grandparents were from Killinchy\u201d in Co Down. <\/p>\n

Walker asked about her relationships with other politicians, saying that in the autobiography, she talked \u201cquite warmly\u201d of McGuinness but how \u201cdifficult\u201d it was to build a rapport with the former first minister, Arlene Foster. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s fair. Arlene might say the same about me,\u201d Sturgeon replied, adding the caveat that while perhaps some of this was down to the differences in their political outlook, \u201cArlene and I just didn\u2019t get on, and that\u2019s just how it was, and that was no doubt partly my fault\u201d. <\/p>\n

With McGuinness, she had a \u201cvery good relationship\u201d, adding that \u201cas somebody who came from the west of Scotland and had grown up during the Troubles and how that was reported into Scotland, at times made me feel a little bit conflicted, because I would have heard everything that Martin was supposedly involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI judged him as I found him. He was one of the friendliest, kindest \u2013 to me \u2013 people that I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Sturgeon said that at British Irish Council meetings \u201cit was almost as if he sensed I was a bit shy and would always make a beeline for me and give me a big hug and tried to make me feel at my ease. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe got on really well, I talked to him on the phone not long before he died … I thought really highly of him.\u201d <\/p>\n

She also discussed her relationship with the former UK prime minister Boris Johnson \u2013 \u201cIt was rubbish. He was a buffoon,\u201d she said to applause from the crowd \u2013 and her meetings with queen Elizabeth while first minister of Scotland, \u201cjust the two of us in a room, and she was always incredibly well informed. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe enjoyed talking about her grandchildren, great grandchildren, she always wanted a bit of the gossip behind the headlines. It was really special,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Kingdom \u201cin its current form is pretty dead\u201d and it is \u201creasonable\u201d there might be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[17296,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,30908,954,23550,108408,47,7,8,393,17331,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-401620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-antrim","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-nicola-sturgeon","20":"tag-northern-ireland","21":"tag-scotland","22":"tag-scottish-national-party","23":"tag-sinn-fein","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-wales","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116285016856716767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}