This is going to be a hugely hot and controversial take, but in a way I think that the Good Friday Agreement was a mistake. You do not negotiate with terrorists. It would have been vastly preferrable for the IRA to have been utterly crushed than for the GFA to happen.
Spain was able to fully and thoroughly crush the Basque terrorists and terrorism in the region; and this is in spite of Basque nationalists being clearly a majority! (unlike NI where Irish nationalsits only make up like 35-40%) What is the UK's excuse?
In fact, I'd have gone a step further and banned all parties with terrorist or paramilitary links. That of course means Sinn Fein would not exist, but also parties like the Ulster Democratic Party. The DUP would have also been banned (indeed the only "legal parties in NI would be the reasonable parties of UUP, SDLP and Alliance pretty much)
And yes, I know the UK government supported the unionist terrorists sometimes. That was wrong and 100% condemnable; but it also happened here (see: GAL and various other similar groups) and we still crushed terrorism thoroughly. What is the UK's excuse for having to sell out to the IRA instead of forcing them to wave the white flag?
Please do not compare Northern Ireland and Basque Country
I think that you would not use the word "unionist" in a Basque and Catalan context if you knew how Ulster unionists really are.
