Beyond The Realm

I have no doubt that the Irish Republic will join the Commonwealth, and sooner rather than later. Most Commonwealth countries are republics, after all. That is not the issue.

But nor is a United Ireland, to which this accession would be entirely unconnected, simply because everything political in the Republic is now entirely unconnected to Northern Ireland, and vice versa.

There is co-operation as between any two neighbouring states with a shared language and a certain amount of shared history, though very different readings of it. America and Canada, for example. Or Germany and Austria. But there is no more than that. Nor will there ever be.

For, if there really are still serious United Irelanders in Ireland rather than among often rather distantly Irish-descended people elsewhere, then for whom do they now vote? The Sinn Féiners are too busy getting their houses in the old imperial capital paid for by the House of Commons Fees Office to bother with anything like that.

The Commonwealth has always been oddly incomplete without the greater part of Ireland. When it joins, it will be precisely because no one there ever even thinks about the smaller part. If anything, they prefer the English.