Trump Says He’d ‘Love to See’ Ireland Unified, Sparking British Backlash
“They asked me about Scotland—that one I won’t talk about yet,” Trump said Sunday, referencing another country divided on leaving the U.K. The Trump family also owns a golf resort in Scotland, which voted against independence from the rest of Great Britain in 2014. “I’ll save that for another day.”
A heated debate
The island of Ireland was divided in 1921 following the Irish War of Independence. While a northern region of six counties remained part of the U.K., the rest of the island, comprising 26 counties, became the Irish Free State, which eventually became a sovereign republic in 1949.
From the 1960s, tensions in the north between largely Catholic Irish nationalists, or republicans, who wish to reunite with the Republic of Ireland, and mainly Protestant unionists who want to stay with Britain culminated in a three-decade, violent period known as the Troubles.
A 1998 peace agreement—dubbed the Good Friday Agreement and mediated in large part by the U.S.—ended the violence and recognized the right of those in Northern Ireland to recognize themselves as British, Irish, or both. It also recognized that Northern Ireland’s status must be based on democratic consent.
