Life is full of surprises. Today the News Letter, a frankly unionist newspaper, has a front page story written by a Lundy….No, wait, hold on. That’s not what he is. But Walter Ellis, a journalist and author, was brought up a Protestant in East Belfast. And what has he done? He’s written a piece headed ‘Within a generation of Irish unity, unionists will have found their place’. I’ll put the link for the piece at the bottom. But in brief Mr Ellis is saying that there will be a united Ireland and that unionists will find a comfortable home there. Fair play to the News Letter for giving their readers Mr Ellis’s perspective.
He may be wrong, of course. Maybe unionists will chafe and feel bitter in a united Ireland. Maybe there won’t ever be a united Ireland. But for me and I suspect many of you and even (be still, my beating heart) many unionists, Mr Ellis’s analysis of the situation will make considerable sense.
It’s easy to produce evidence that we’re moving towards a united Ireland, starting with the demographic trend. It’s not so easy to produce evidence that we’re moving towards a strong and continuing link with Britain: clearly the entire UK, thanks to Brexit, is going to face enormous strains in the next few years. So you’d have to say Mr Ellis is more likely to be right than wrong.
Like Brexit, the important thing for Irish reunification is that it’s something we should be preparing for. If we don’t, we’ll face a unity cliff-edge, and that would be truly stupid and possibly dangerous.
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