The back story to Brexit and the backstop

If the backstop becomes a nationalist project, it will damage the Good Friday Agreement, not save it

One hundred years ago last Friday, voters in the Dublin constituency of Rathmines elected a unionist to represent them at Westminster. Maurice Dockrell, a Protestant businessman, won the seat comfortably, thanks in part to a split in the anti-union vote: he won just 54 more votes than the combined total of his Sinn Féin and Nationalist Party opponents. Dockrell was one of just three unionists elected in the 26 counties in 1918; the ...