A Northern Ireland that cannot govern itself will always be brittle and unstable

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#FlegOkay, Nuala McKeever’s piece for the Belfast Telegraph put me in mind of the paper we pulled together and published ten years this May on, as it happens, the future of unionism:

This is not about making unionism more yielding. A ‘long peace’ will not be an easy peace and unionists will often need to be tough in their projection of power.

But ‘no’ should never be their final answer. Defensiveness is far too predictable a strategy. A genuinely disruptive politics must shape the terrain on which future contests for the Union will be fought, opening up alternatives, rather than shutting them down.

It relies on democracy – a Northern Ireland that cannot govern itself will always be a brittle and unstable entity.

Quite.

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