But it is a mistake for which we should all be grateful

But it is a mistake for which we should all be grateful.Ahead lies the old problem of building a devolved, power-sharing government for Northern Ireland The basic question is brutally simple. What has the majority learnt from history? If British troops are withdrawn and direct London rule ends, can Unionist leaders at Stormont and in local government be trusted not to discriminate against the minority? All the entrenched clauses and bills of rights on earth are useless without the will not just to co-exist on equal terms but to work together on the task of modernising Northern Ireland. If power- sharing fails again, then off go the lights and on goes the bloodshed.But even if the ceasefire holds and power-sharing works, Northern Ireland will not be suddenly transformed. The Orange Marches will go on, with their Union Flags and Lambeg drums. The republicans will still rally to commemorate the Easter Rising and Bloody Sunday, and Sinn Fein will go on preaching the cause of a united Ireland. Protestant and Catholic children will still go to segregated schools for the foreseeable future. Guns and ammunition, greased and hidden under floorboards, will take another generation to rust into uselessness.What will have changed, if we are lucky, is the meaning of all that.

There are not two nations but two cultural traditions in Northern Ireland. Each will cling to its rituals of identity, its martyrs and songs. But these rituals will gradually cease to be programmes for action. They will proclaim who people are and have been in the past, but no longer what they intend to do in the future.

Eventually, if all goes well, they will be no more threatening than Guy Fawkes bonfires in English cities or Spanish pageants about the Moorish wars.There is identity, and there is allegiance. The game now is to separate them, so that a woman in Derry can say: ‘I feel myself an Irish Catholic, but Dublin is not my capital,’ and a man in Carrickfergus can say: ‘I am an Ulster Protestant, but that does not mean that I look to London for my orders.’ Let the day come when Northern Ireland – a self-governing region in the European Union – will look to Brussels before London or Dublin That day, the Troubles will finally be over.. MY CONCERTED efforts on behalf of Mr Tony Blair and his estimable new Labour Party continue apace. For those of us who are blessed with what one must learn to call, in the dread words of the marketing moguls, ‘disposable income’, the new Labour Party offers a highly attractive package of tough economic policies targeted against the worse-off, combined with a long overdue crackdown on welfare scroungers, two key strategies the Tory party has, to its cost, neglected to initiate these past 15-odd years. The night before last, I enjoyed a hugely entertaining repast with Mr Tony Blair, giving him the chance to meet captains of industry in the newly opened Red wing of the Carlton Club. As we entered, Prescott – absolute treasure, incidentally, and a dab hand with the trouser-press – served us with a selection of soft drinks and beverages from the trolley, as well as providing an assortment of savouries, such as nuts, crisps and Twiglets. ‘Your catering experience will come in immensely handy when Tony gets to Number 10, Prescott,’ I reassured him, affably, ‘and I daresay that if you give him a nice smile he might even splash out on a brand new uniform for you, replete with gold epaulets and clean towel, eh?’
‘And you can piss off, for starters,’ he replied, a little brusquely for my taste.