Brexit or not, Derry will think in all-island terms

ONLY LAST autumn, Northern Ireland’s second city was eagerly awaiting the opening of a graduate medical school. It was billed as the centrepiece of an urban renewal plan, which over time would improve health care as more doctors stayed in the region. Then came the bad news: the startup was to be postponed until at least the end of 2020. Because of a political impasse that has seen Northern Ireland’s government suspended for more than two years, there was no local minister to sign off the new faculty. It was “bitterly disappointing”, says Paddy Nixon, vice-chancellor of Ulster University (UU), who had masterminded the plan.

To grasp the anger in Derry, recall that a lack of higher education has been a festering grievance in this mainly Catholic city for over 50 years. In a land of long memories, people still fume over the decision by Northern Ireland’s unionist masters in 1965 to launch the region’s second university not in Derry but in Protestant Coleraine.