Sense and reference

• The Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided a clear guide.
• They have to do what the negotiating teams, of which I was a part, did in Northern Ireland.
• The problem is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ally, the United States of America, who have failed to apply the lessons of Northern Ireland to Middle East peacemaking.

How ‘peace polls’ work

• The objective was to determine the precise points of common ground, where they existed, or effective compromise where it was needed for peacemaking.
• So I always made a point of hand delivering the reports to Mitchell and the parties the day before they were published.
• Through public opinion polls the people gained a seat at the negotiating table, and through a referendum the deal was made.

When it all went wrong

• I had been in touch with Mitchell and met him in his office at the State Department.
• At that time I had also been running peace polls in Sri Lanka with support from the Norwegians.
• So I did not get the funding and Mitchell eventually resigned his post without achieving peace in May 2011.
• But I had made all necessary preparations and contacts with all the parties to the conflict to make it work.
• My pollster Mina Zemach was a good friend of Peres and had been his pollster when he led the Labour party.
• Like Sinn Féin they had a legitimate grievance and said they would be happy to cooperate with the peace polls.

Misplaced optimism

• In my optimism at the time, I thought perhaps that Clinton – if she became president – would send her husband to the Middle East as her special envoy.
• Bill Clinton had got very close to making an agreement some years earlier with the “Clinton parameters”, but he ran out of time.
• And then Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump – and so we are where we are.
• It is just as likely that my optimism was misplaced and that Clinton and possibly Joe Biden – who has always been a very strong supporter of Israel – did not want to oppose Netanyahu for domestic political reasons.

Colin John Irwin receives funding from: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in South East Europe, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, OneVoice, Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now FCDO), Economic and Social Research Council (UK ESRC), United Nations, InterPeace, Health and Welfare Canada, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), British Academy, Norwegian Peoples Aid, The Day After, No Peace Without Justice, US Department of State, Local Administrations Council Unit (Syria), Asia Foundation, Department for International Development (UK DFID), OpenAI, Atlantic Philanthropies, Universities: Dalhousie, Manitoba, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, Queens Belfast, Liverpool. Also member of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) which promotes freedom to publish public opinion polls and sets international professional standards.

• The United Kingdom is about to embark on an orgy of flag-waving pomp and pageantry in celebration of King Charles III’s coronation.
• Charles is already the ruling monarch, having ascended to the throne following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.

1. 3 days of celebration

• Not content with dedicating just one day to the coronation, the Brits are putting on a three-day extravaganza starting May 6, 2023.
• As Pauline Maclaran from the Royal Holloway University of London explained, that Saturday will be dedicated to the actual formal proceedings.
• But it won’t just be Brits marking the occasion, especially at the central event on Saturday.

2. A notable no-show

• There will be one notable absence among the overseas well-wishers at the coronation: President Joe Biden.
• In fact, no U.S. president has ever attended a British monarch’s coronation.
• But, Chernock notes, what is perhaps of more importance is whom the U.S. leader sends in his stead.
• Read more:
  Biden's coronation no-show is no snub – more telling is whom he sends to King Charles' big day

3. But look who is going

• That far-fetched theory seems even more so when you look at who is attending.
• Sinn Féin’s acceptance of the invitation is part of the same effort, but also has a more political intent,” McLoughlin wrote.
• Read more:
  Sinn Féin at the coronation: how to understand Michelle O'Neill's decision to attend King Charles's big day

4. Charles’ transatlantic cousins

• But that shouldn’t stop residents of Buckingham, Virginia, or Westminster, Colorado, from joining in the fun alongside the folk of their place namesakes in the U.K.
• Indeed, there might be one or two people there who can legitimately lay claim to having a bit of royal blood themselves.
• “It’s fair to ask what it really means to say that someone is a direct descendant of royalty,” King pondered.

5. What next for Charles?