{"id":217892,"date":"2025-06-27T06:17:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217892\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T06:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:17:13","slug":"sam-mcbride-a-united-ireland-is-a-serious-idea-and-deserves-to-be-taken-seriously-yet-often-nationalism-as-well-as-unionism-fails-to-do-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217892\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam McBride: A united Ireland is a serious idea and deserves to be taken seriously \u2013\u00a0yet often nationalism, as well as unionism, fails to do so"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Both sides have a good argument for their stance, but rarely is it made in a sensible way\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Sam McBride and Fintan O'Toole, authors of 'For and Against a United Ireland', a new book to be published by the Royal Irish Academy. Photo: Conor Mulhern\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0d88b9da-0bac-406e-b433-69db23eaf0ba.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Sam McBride and Fintan O&#8217;Toole, authors of &#8216;For and Against a United Ireland&#8217;, a new book to be published by the Royal Irish Academy. Photo: Conor Mulhern<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ireland has many divides. The border might be the most controversial, but there are divisions which predated partition and have the potential to outlast it even if the border was to be removed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Yet beyond differences of religion, of constitutional preference, of class \u2014 and even newer points of difference such as ethnicity and language \u2014 lies what is now perhaps the most important division: the split between those who want to win a border poll at all costs, and those whose respect for their neighbours outweighs their desire to get everything they want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both sides have a good argument for their stance, but rarely is it made in a sensible way&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[61928,924,86301,1144,6410,11528,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-217892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-border-poll","9":"tag-democratic-unionist-party","10":"tag-good-friday-agreement","11":"tag-northern-ireland","12":"tag-sam-mcbride","13":"tag-sinn-fein","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114753873082941444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}