We are under some time pressure, so I would rather continue.
The agreement is also important in what it says about identity, and I wish to stress this point. It gets to the heart of the old problem that dogged Northern Ireland politics, which was the view that if one community gained, the other had necessarily lost. The tyranny of identity politics can be that it forces people to choose between multiple and overlapping identities—are they one thing or the other? When it comes to identity, the genius of the Good Friday agreement is that it does not force people to choose. Instead, it talks of
“the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both”.
Let us not forget the “or both", as it is very important. It gives everyone in Northern Ireland an equal status and a legitimate sense of belonging.