Perhaps it’s just as well that president Joe Biden only spent a few hours in Northern Ireland, confined himself to making a friendly speech at the University of Ulster, and chose not to invest any political capital in attempting a breakthrough on a par with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
While no more malicious than any other member of the Irish diaspora getting sentimental about their roots, the president’s well-known affection for the old country has evidently riled some senior figures in the Democratic Unionist Party.
The former leader Arlene, now Baroness, Foster declared that Mr Biden “hates the UK”; while the splenetic Sammy Wilson claims that the president is anti-British. Their party leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has refrained from endorsing his colleagues’ unnuanced analyses, wisely. No good comes from insulting the leader of the world’s only superpower.
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