I never thought I’d be quoting the state-run China Daily for an accurate picture of the sorry state of the world following the US government’s kidnap of autocratic Venezuelan president Nicholás Maduro. But here I go. “From fabricated charges to military strikes and regime change, the operation follows a familiar and deeply troubling script – one that reflects the logic of state piracy”, it said. “Sovereign governments are first delegitimised, then destroyed by force, after which foreign capital moves in to carve up natural resources. This behaviour drags the world back towards a barbaric colonial era of plunder, in open defiance of international law”.
“What the world is witnessing is not a ‘rules-based’ order, but colonial pillaging. Upholding sovereignty, equality and non-interference is not optional. It is the foundation of global stability – and it must be defended”. Will we see the unthinkable next, Europe being forced to mobilise to defend the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland from an invasion by the mad Trump’s America?
As Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, put it: “If the United States were to choose to attack another NATO country, then everything would come to an end. The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO ,the world’s strongest defensive alliance – all that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another.”
Can Europe and the world stop this mendacious (he uttered 30,573 lies and misleading claims during his first term, according to the Washington Post) and megalomaniac US president, an amoral sociopath who does not know right from wrong and believes that the only constraint on his power is “my own morality, my own mind”? A man who is surrounded by genuinely wicked advisers and acolytes: men like Stephen Miller, who believes that “we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. That is the iron law of the world since the beginning of time”; and Steve Bannon, who has been organising and promoting far right and fascist parties all over Europe for more than a decade.
In my Dublin Unitarian church last Sunday, the academic and writer, Anthony Roche, read W.B. Yeats’ prophetic 1920 poem: ‘The Second Coming’. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity./…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
It is almost a relief to return from this terrifying international panorama to the familiar, humdrum divisions of Northern Ireland. Although even here the excesses of Trump’s savage legions intrude. Renée Nicole Good, the 37-year-old mother of three who was shot dead by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent while trying to drive away from a confrontation with ICE in Minneapolis – and who was called a “domestic terrorist” by senior Trump officials – spent five summers as a teenager in Northern Ireland as part of Christian youth missions organised by the Presbyterian Church. The former minister of Saintfield Presbyterian Church in County Down, Rev James Hyndman, remembered her as “a lovely, kind, compassionate, quiet, creative girl, just a lovely, lovely girl.”
And so back to Northern Irish affairs. It is sometimes difficult for an outsider, even a passionately interested outsider, to know how bad – or not so bad – things are in that divided place. Leading journalists seem united in agreement that the place is failing. Sam McBride of the Belfast Telegraph noted that “logically, unionism’s central mission is quite simple: It needs to make Northern Ireland work. Despite the myriad failures of this place, it does work after a fashion. But far too many areas of public services are regressing. Were it not so cravenly populist, the DUP could be leading the debate on revenue-raising or cost-cutting by telling the public that if they want to clean up Lough Neagh, to be able to build houses, and to have better roads, then there must be either more taxes or cuts elsewhere.”1
Alex Kane in the Irish News found that the relationship between the DUP and Sinn Fein on the Northern Ireland Executive is “immeasurably worse” than it was during the early years of the Paisley-Robinson-McGuinness executive. It is “blindingly obvious that all of nationalism is on what might be described as ‘Irish Unity Now’ territory, while the overwhelming majority of unionism has, to all intents and purposes, abandoned the idea that the assembly and executive can be relied upon to protect and promote the interests of the unionist communities.”2
Malachi O’Doherty in the Belfast Telegraph wrote that the DUP and Sinn Fein are “stuck together as in a tragically fractious arranged marriage, doomed to being unhappy together without the prospect of separation. And they are also doomed to being responsible for governing the region and to bearing the criticism for how badly that is done. This is an awful, pathetic position to be in.”3
The Pivotal think tank set out how badly Northern Ireland has been governed in sober language in its September 2025 report: “The Executive has promised much but avoided difficult choices about
policies, priorities and funding which are essential if real change is to be achieved. The public are yet to see tangible improvements in health waiting lists, GP access, affordable housing, policing, poverty and more. In fact, many of these areas have got worse over the past 18 months.4
“No real plans are in place to address some long-term challenges like wastewater infrastructure, productivity and poverty. There does not appear to be recognition that a step-change
is needed, and that continuing with current policies will only lead to further deterioration in outcomes. To this end, it is very concerning that the longer-term Investment Strategy, which was
due to sit alongside the Programme for Government, has still not been published.
“The absence of substantive plans is largely due to the Executive’s continued inability to reach collective agreement on difficult decisions, to work across departmental silos, and to be honest
with the public that choices are needed between different policy aims. Without a doubt Northern Ireland faces many difficult issues, but continuing with current policies will only lead to ever worsening outcomes.”
However despite the widespread impression that the power-sharing Executive is failing to govern the province effectively, relatively few voters want it scrapped. In his latest opinion poll last month, Professor Peter Shirlow, the director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, asked if people would vote for a party that brought the Northern Ireland Assembly down before the next Assembly election in 2027. Sixty percent agreed that they would not vote for a party that collapsed the Assembly before that election. A mere 12% stated that they would.5
Among party voters 51.9% of Sinn Fein voters, 78.4% of SDLP voters, 55.5% of Ulster Unionist Party voters, 70.5% of Alliance voters and 32.8% of DUP voters stated they would not vote for a party that collapsed the Assembly before the 2027 election. Shirlow concluded that this “may suggest that Sinn Fein collapsing the Assembly would not embolden but instead probably undermine the pro-unity vote share.”
1 ‘Unionism’s lost decade: How a flawed decision 10 years ago precipitated a collapse for the ideology which built Northern Ireland’, 6 December
2 ‘In 2007 I had hope. Now I don’t think the parties give a toss about what chaos we’re in’, 31 December
3 ‘Sinn Fein and the DUP are trapped in a miserable marriage…and our sectarian politics won’t let them escape, 30 December
4 https://www.pivotalpolicy.org/assets/files/publications/pivotal_tracker_2025_sept.pdf
2 Irelands together 
One of your best pieces yet, Andy, contrasting Northern Ireland’s petty dysfunctionalities with the real problems Trump is unleashing across the globe. If Trump can invade Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, and even Canada at will, why should Putin not attempt to take Ukraine, or China take Taiwan? It is the logic which led to the second world war, started, allegedly, to address Germany’s need for Lebernsaum. The difference now is that it is nuclear powers leading the charge.
Can I suggest that the majority of NI voters who continue to support the Good Friday institutions despite their dysfunctionality are not being as delusional as you appear to suggest? Absurd as it may seem, current dysfunctionality is far preferable to the overt violence of the Troubles. The real danger is that a declining Britain will lose interest in funding the charade any further. Northern Ireland will then face a choice between descending into third world poverty or linking up with a more prosperous Ireland.
And there will be strings attached to the latter option, if chosen. Ireland cannot afford to take on NI, in all its dysfunctionality, as it is now. Both North and south will have to change dramatically if the marriage is to work and net growth is to absorb the cost of funding the current Barnett subvention. The difference is that the south has already made considerable strides in that direction, whereas unionism is regressing. Without a transformation of the political culture, Northern Ireland will be left to stew in its own juices, its people condemned to a slow decline into poverty.
But all is not lost. The growth and prosperity of the south is leaking north despite all the obstacles such as the refusal to develop the A5. Most people will have no truck with such nonsense. And contrary to your quotes – two NATO countries – Turkey and Cyprus – have been at war before without the alliance collapsing. Europe is having to grow up and be primarily responsible for its own defence and prosperity which means ditching many of the dysfunctionalities of current EU decision making processes.
There are signs that many of the major European states realise things cannot go on as they have in the past if Russian aggression is to be deterred and economic growth reinvigorated. If only there were similar leadership within Northern Ireland, because, without it, no one will want to touch it with a bargepole, never mind underwrite its finances. Unionism needs a huge wakeup call, and indulging its current fantasies does it no favours at all. The world is changing and unionism’s identity issues are nobody’s problem but their own, despite the efforts of some to make them everybody else’s problem. Sorry, we’ve been there, and we’re not going back.
Stephen Miller: “We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. That is the iron law of the world since the beginning of time.”
Hitler: ““The fundamental motif through all the centuries has been the principle that force and power are the determining factors. All development is struggle. Only force rules. Force is the first law.”