The Guardian view on Irish politics: an enviable beauty is born

In the archipelago of offshore European islands we inhabit, a new nation is growing in importance. This new nation is not the divided, tragi-comic “global” Britain of Boris Johnson’s sloppy and incontinent imagination. It is not even the independent Scotland whose birth Mr Johnson is himself doing much to foster – though one day it may be, given his slapdash premiership. The new nation is the Irish Republic. There are three connected reasons for saying a 98-year-old nation is new. The first is Ireland’s latest government, which took office in June....