A quiet shift

How have your political views changed over time?

Growing up in Northern Ireland, my sense of identity felt fairly straightforward. I felt British, reinforced by the fact that I held a British passport. That small booklet carried a lot of weight. It told me who I was supposed to be and where I supposedly belonged.

As I got older, education began to loosen that certainty. University didn’t just expose me to books and history, but to people with very different backgrounds and experiences to my own.

Over time, my sense of identity shifted. I started to feel more Irish than I once did, not out of rebellion, but out of understanding. Yet even that didn’t feel like a complete answer. These days, it often feels like the UK doesn’t really want us (or even know we exist), while Ireland doesn’t fully claim us either.

And strangely, that’s where I have found my true identity.

Rather than feeling caught between two identities, I’m happy to be uniquely Northern Irish. Not British, not Irish, but shaped by both. A product of history, education, conversation, and contradiction. My political views haven’t changed because I picked a side, they have changed because I was willing to listen and open my mind.