It finally came to fruition in the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, which Major and Reynolds unveiled together. The document contained nothing that could be interpreted as a British declaration of intent to leave. Rather, it had as its heart a serpentine sentence which intertwined the concepts of self-determination and consent on which Hume and Adams had spent so much time. It read: ‘The British government agree that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of
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