Don’t expect a united Ireland any time soon

A hundred years since the founding of the Irish state – on 6 December 1922 – how likely or desirable is the prospect of Irish unity? The recent electoral success of Sinn Fein suggested to many – particularly in the US – that the idea’s momentum is now unstoppable. Of course it’s being egged on by Sinn Fein itself, whose New York Times advertisements in March proclaimed that Irish unity would be in the best interests of ‘citizens abroad and the wider diaspora’.