Unionists have now manoeuvred themselves into an increasingly ridiculous position where their new enemy is the British Government who have become, for them, the next new reason for not engaging in political co-operation with the neighbours on this island. They cry foul at the bogeyman of the EU (aka Dublin).
This of course is not a new concept to anyone who knows the historical positioning of unionism over the last 150 years. There is nothing new about unionism threatening to Out-British the British – they have a long history of that. What is new is that they do this from a position of weakness, a position where their in-built majority has disappeared, a position where their archaic emblems and symbols have become irrelevant and where their own community have begun increasingly to reject them.
It is not that the community they say they represent is irrelevant- more that the representation they espouse is increasingly irrelevant for that community. It is this momentum, in tandem with an increased confidence within nationalists in the north, combined with a new realisation in the south, that is making change inevitable in the short term In Ireland. We’ve not gone away, you know.
There is truly a monumental amount of work required to remove the barriers that have been structured to keep the island partitioned, but the feeling is that reunification of the island seems inexorable.
We always knew it was inevitable.
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