Sir, – Mary Lou McDonald says that in the event of reunification the British government will “not walk off the pitch scot-free. Of course we are going to talk about money”.
She adds that she expects assistance from Brussels as well as London (News, February 4th).
Proponents of reunification often argue that English hostility to fiscal transfers to Northern Ireland will help to bring about an end to partition. The leader of Sinn Féin expects those transfers to continue even if Northern Ireland ceases to be part of the United Kingdom.
As the politics academic Prof Arthur Aughey once said of such an approach, “Tell that to the voter in Hull”.
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Mary Lou McDonald’s expectations of European Union money are no less unrealistic. Perhaps it has escaped her attention that the United Kingdom has just left that organisation. The years of annual multibillion fiscal transfers from London to Brussels are over. The EU would find it hard to fund Ms McDonald’s political fantasies. – Yours, etc,
CDC ARMSTRONG,
Belfast.