You have to hand it to the southern media – they never give up. You’d think that twenty-five years after the Good Friday Agreement their hostility towards anything like a border poll would have softened a bit. Not a chance. In today’s Irish Times  there is an article , the title of which might have come from the mouth of Sammy Wilson or Ian Paisley Jr: ‘A united Ireland by the 50^th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement? No

 chance!’

While you roll your eyeballs from the back of your head into their normal slot,  let me try to summarise the argument of the journalist – one Brendan O’Brien.

He mentions “Queen Elizabeth’s ground-breaking visits”  – which they weren’t, except for someone easily reduced to a trembling blancmange in the presence of royalty.

He talks of the many “false dawns” surrounding the Stormont Assembly. I interpret that as yet another sign that unionism cannot bring itself to accept equality. Not Mr O’Brien.

 “No. First, get back to the starting blocks. Get the Assembly, Executive and North-South Ministerial Council up, running and doing the business. Ah, but the Border poll? Not a chance.”

He then puts forward his argument for a pushed-down-the-road border poll:

“It was almost a full century before the two Civil War parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, agreed to govern together. Why should it be any different in Northern Ireland after its recent 30-year conflict?”

See what he did there? There was armed conflict in the civil war, there was armed conflict in the northern Troubles. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael didn’t come together in government until nearly a century later, so the 25 years since the GFA is much, much too soon to expect normal politics.

He goes on to cite Father Alex Reid’s injunction that nationalists should recognise and respect the unionist identity. He ends as he began:

“No, there won’t be a United Ireland by the agreement’s 50th Anniversary. But if things are done right, this wee island could be on the way to a healthy, happy, unified future.”

Mr O’Brien clearly hasn’t read the Good Friday Agreement and speaks from a position of ignorance. Or he has read the GFA and happily ignores its terms.

Make no mistake about it: the establishment in the south and its malleable media will do and say anything, anything, to postpone the dark day of a border poll. Take a bow, Mr O’Brien. Your masters will be pleased with you today.