Is it time for Northern Ireland to be an independent state?

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‘A self-governing Northern Ireland could then have a three-choice referendum’ (Getty Images)

To my English mind, there seems a particularly simple solution to the predicament of Northern Ireland’s border issues. If the six counties were to become neither part of the UK, nor a united Ireland, then they could be an independent state governing themselves from Stormont.

With the US, or President Joe Biden’s, interest in seeing a peaceful island of Ireland and no breakdown of the Good Friday Agreement, political oversight by the Americans (or even a peacekeeping policing role) could help to prevent the return of sectarian violence.

This should be better received by the American public than the failed attempt to have a similar effect in Afghanistan and might even get the support of the British public.