For me the argument is about identity. I think a border on the island of Ireland was wrong but a border in the Irish sea is equally unacceptable. We have got to come up with something else. What we were given was an oasis, a mirage in the desert and now we are left just eating sand.
Joel Keys
The young loyalist who dared contemplate the idea of a ‘new’, united, Ireland
by Lisa O’Carroll in The Guardian
He was the teenage supermarket worker who shocked MPs examining loyalist anger in Northern Ireland by claiming that sometimes violence “was the only tool you have left”. Joel Keys left the committee chair, Tory MP Simon Hoare, “chilled and appalled” and he faced a media backlash.
Six months on Keys, now 20, has not disappeared into oblivion after his 15 minutes of fame. Nor has he abandoned his position on violence. He has ambitions to become a local politician representing young loyalist communities that he describes as “goldmines” left behind by unionist parties and education leaders.
But his willingness to discuss the possibility of a united Ireland, or a “new Ireland” as he puts it, has led to him being branded a “weak loyalist”. Continue
