Follow RT on By Philip McGowan, professor of American Literature and Liberal Arts programme lead at Queen's University Belfast. Follow Philip on Twitter @pipmcgowan The recent violent events in Northern Ireland show that we need leaders who will take responsibility for our social and economic problems and steer us away from the past – not just chalk it all up to Brexit. These protests have not suddenly appeared out of nowhere, but neither are they all about Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol. They are the culmination of a complex mix of change and a deep-rooted resistance to it, and an ingrained political and social inertia particular to this place. It’s true that some things in Northern Ireland have changed enormously for the better on a day-to-day basis since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, but look behind that surface improvement and quickly you will see evidence that other things have not changed that much at all. Meanwhile, our politics has atrophied as it has polarised in the intervening decades.