The Guardian view on Jeremy Corbyn and Ireland: all about the border | Editorial
Northern Ireland was a defining issue for Jeremy Corbyn during his long career as a backbencher. Mr Corbyn the backbencher was a republican supporter. He backed a united Ireland and he prominently identified himself on several occasions with Sinn Fi(C)in, with which the Provisional IRA was entwined. He voted against the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement on the grounds that it strengthened the border between the north and the south. He was consistently outside the Labour party mainstream, which favoured a generally bipartisan approach on Northern Ireland. Nevertheless he voted in favour of the 1998 Good Friday agreement on the grounds that it offered the hope of peace and reconciliation across the divide.
As leader of the Labour party, Mr Corbyn has been more circumspect about the Irish issue. Thursday's visit to Belfast was his first since his election in 2015. The visit was preceded by a now familiar burst of press indignation after his spokesman confirmed that Mr Corbyn continues to support Irish unification, while stressing that he does so within the framework of the 1998 agreement. The agreement says a united Ireland can only be achieved by the separate and concurrent votes of the two parts of Ireland and that, until this happens, the union of Northern Ireland with Britain is legitimate. But Mr Corbyn's past record inevitably allowed DUP unionist MPs to taunt him this week with being unwilling to condemn IRA atrocities or meet their victims.
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