English leave NI? I bet most people in Britain would welcome that. Give it to Ireland? They wouldn't take it. I once thought that handing the country over to Iran might help, by uniting everyone against the occupiers, but recent events in Iraq have shown that to be a non- sequitur.

Perhaps there's some milage in creating a completely new federal state, consisting of Eire, Northern Ireland and Scotland. That way, you get a middle-sized European country of about 11 million people, with only a slight preponderance of Catholics. The Loyalists wouldn't have surrendered if the Queen became nominal head of state, though whether you could get the Republic to agree is another matter. And perhaps we could complement the Celtic Tiger with the Rangers Tiger.