I'm not even Irish and certainly have no skin in this game but what the UK did to Ireland over the centuries is disgraceful, and it clearly is struggling to come to terms with it.
Much of the infrastructure there reminded me more of post-communist Eastern European countries than western Europe, but then so do many parts of England (no offense).
I wonder if NI wouldn't be better off part of the Republic and the EU, now with Brexit and everything?
It used to be the case that the roads would get noticeably worse as you crossed the border into the republic, now the situation is reversed.
NI receives a disproportionately large amount of money from the UK gov compared to other UK nations.
The place needs to be actively developed, not repeatedly patched up and sent on its way to hobble along.
NI is a little better-off than much of England in that regard, outside of Tory towns and villages. My home town never recovered after Thatcher.
Unification will happen when the advantage of receiving such money will be clearly be offset by the disadvantage of having a broken political system (NI regional government is boycotted by unionists, while the national government is boycotted by republicans). As money reduces further and further while annoyances get bigger and bigger (because of an entrenched "England-first" government pursuing policies like Brexit), that threshold gets closer and closer.
Those subsidies don't seem to be enough to save it when the infrastructure is crumbling and everyone is moving abroad for jobs. Also, many countries don't need subsidies, they need opportunities. Subsidies are like paying a crackehead to buy more drugs instead of getting him a home, warm meal, a shower and schooling for job applications.
>money they likely wouldn't get from Dublin
They would get it from the EU then, and probably a lot more, as the UK gov is now struggling financially to stay solvent. The EU can very generous if you can play the game right. Just look at Poland 20 years ago and Poland today, the difference EU funds and the EU open market made, is night and day. It has also benefiter the Republic of Ireland. I doubt they would have been in the same state today without EU membership. For all its faults, the EU has been a force for good many times. Another English speaking region joining the EU could be a mutual benefit.
The UK government didn't have a lot of choice, the Ulster Protestants would almost certainly have fought a civil war if the full island was granted domininion status.
The boundary commission was problematic, but the real issue post partition was the removal of PR by the NI government. I think that if the ballot box hadn't essentially been stacked against Catholics we might not have seen the Troubles.
India, Pakistan, I am seeing a pattern.
Even if you get independace from england, you won't leave in one piece.
So which one was that then? Was this before the Representation of the people act or were women and working class men still banned?
> It was a landslide victory for a one-Ireland state and the UK created this never-seen-before entity as a response.
In the 1918 election in Ulster 66% voted for unionist parties.