Sir Keir Starmer will recognise Palestine as a country despite objections from both the US and Israel. Yet when it came to independence for Scotland, the three main parties at Westminster were against the idea at the 2014 referendum, and none have called for a similar vote in Wales. How, then, to decide which ‘two-state solutions’ deserve our support?
In 1974, the government of Cyprus was overthrown in a coup, and plans to merge the island with Greece followed. That might have worked, given Greek Cypriots made up 80 per cent of the population, but the Turkish minority, already marginalised, feared expulsion. Just five days after the coup, Turkey invaded from the north and by 1983 had created the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.
More than 40 years on, Britain and the EU get around the pr