Newton Emerson wrote in the Sunday Times of February 16 2014:
"The parallels between Redmond and SNP leader Alex Salmond are remarkable, as the Scottish press has noted. In his long, democratic fight for Home Rule, Redmond played down identity politics, spurned cultural nationalism and focused on debating the practicalities, until he could portray the debate as negotiating the inevitable. Salmond has done the same and the results are transformative. Meanwhile, Adams remains an anti-Redmondite two decades after the IRA-ceasefire. His vision of a United Ireland is high on symbolism and low on detail, invoking all the alarm of change with none of the assurance of fact."
He continued:
"Redmondite" is a word almost lost to Irish politics but it remains the best approach to peaceful transition, as even dissident republicans now subconsciously admit. Yet Sinn Fein will not concede this, and sparing its president's blushes looks like the principal reason. Any number of volunteers can be dumped on the scrap heap of revisionism, but Adams can never be wrong. Perhaps he will have to be dumped, too, before this issue can be addressed. Until then, his party keeps pumping out rationales for violence that hang over us all."Alex Massie said here that Scottish independence would be largely irrelevant to the Northern Ireland question.
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