LETTER: Obvious solution is to team up with Scots

SIR - Poor Britain. It started a process that it cannot complete.

The solution is not in its hands, but in ours. We haven’t noticed it till now because we have been looking to London and Brussels instead of Belfast and Edinburgh. And Dublin.

It all starts there. It won’t be easy, but it is do-able and robust.

And you could print it on a T-shirt, so it could be read from a distance: ‘A United Ireland in Federation with an Independent Scotland.’ Nationalist goals would at last be met, but without creating a new minority in the North.

Northern Ireland would become centrally placed in a new policy. In Dublin and Edinburgh governments would continue to sit, and the Federal parliament might assemble in Stormont.

After all the hassle, the EU deserves some good news. Germany united by federating and understands the process deeply.

And England? It gains a clarity, a road it can drive down. And a chance to find itself, after its huge Imperial adventures. (And anyway, that is not our responsibility).

Imagine. We can start to enjoy actual Ireland, in a new federal state of about 10 million souls, united by language, geography, culture, history, by so much.

And, if that all works, we should build a bridge between us and Port Patrick in Scotland, bringing wealth into the North and the border region of Scotland, completing our northern land bridge through Lieth to the EU.

Yours sincerely,

Dave Edmond,

Coolmountain,

Dunmanway.