The Cardiff Memorandum

Today, a little bit of history was made in the capital of Cymru.

Worth a thousand words and all that, it’s a keeper of an image.

The idea, say, during the 1987 British general election, that the leader of the SNP would stand beside Uachtarán Shinn Féin as she accompanied her colleague, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, would have been unthinkable for most reasonable people.

Full disclosure: 40 years ago, your humble correspondent wasn’t a reasonable person.

John Swinney’s historic move was flagged earlier this year, and I covered it here at the time.

This memorandum of understanding has produced the usual reaction from self-styled “Ulster Scots” in the Six Counties.

Diaspora communities are usually fully in favour of their ancestral homeland achieving self-government.

Of course, as Neil Ascherson famously observed in his brilliant book “Black Sea” (1995), they belonged to the category of “outpost people”.

“In Northern Ireland, the Protestant ‘Loyalist’ community  proclaims itself to be the bastion of true Britishness with an unreconstructed Union Jack fervour which now seems  antiquated, even faintly foreign, in London or Manchester.”

[P100]

Ouch!

This meeting in Cardiff happened in the same news cycle as the German Jock President gave his opinion on the prospect of 32 Counties during his visit to our little island.

Inevitably, himself will have his own reasons for slapping Burnham around on this.

The important point is that he CAN.

What WOULD get interesting is if he decides to start arming Argentina to boost Javier Milei’s popularity over the Malvinas.

Now that there is oil in the equation, anyone ruling this out is, to quote another commander in chief, ‘misunderestimating’.