Let's be clear: Joe Biden isn’t the problem for Northern Ireland – it’s the Brexit diehards | Martin Kettle

When it comes to Irish politics, the US president has baggage. But the DUP’s attempts to cast him as a meddling nationalist won’t wash

Normally it is difficult for a visitor to arrive in Ireland without seeing large signs proclaiming how welcome they are. The fusillade of unionist hostility that marked Joe Biden’s visit to Belfast suggests a very different message. You would almost think that everything in Northern Ireland would have been sweetness and light if only the US president had had the decency to have stayed away.

Unionist politics deployed big guns against Biden’s visit. The former Democratic Unionist party leader Arlene Foster can be quite pragmatic; on Wednesday, even she declared that he “hates the United Kingdom”. Her former deputy, Nigel Dodds, dismissed the president as “transparently pro-nationalist”. Predictably, the DUP MP for East Antrim, Sammy Wilson, suggested an even darker purpose, charging Biden not just with the crimes of being “anti-British” and “pro-republican” but of “trying to force the UK to fit into the EU mould”.

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