The letter from 200 northern nationalists saying that Brexit leaves them with a similar sense of abandonment to their parents or grandparents after partition makes depressing reading.
Has it really come to this?
If proof is needed, the evidence of damage caused by Brexit is paraded before our eyes after the briefest moment of euphoria that we’d got over a big hump.
But Nationalists are not unique.
Brexit has excited real fears on both sides.
If you close your eyes and let your worst feelings rip without restraint, both sets are all too plausible.
This is what happens in a chronic leadership vacuum.
There is a risk that clever people may make fears worse.
Extreme views of an Irish “rights” constitution against a British “political” constitution could bring the two into conflict and wreck the GFA.
Nationalists may exaggerate the power of Irish/EU citizenship in Northern Ireland to hold out for Sinn Fein’s claims of right, under which they seem to mean that nationalists must get anything they voted for, regardless of the political process.
This conjures up a vision of Irish citizens living in an alien land that is the Brexit North, a large minority with their rights guaranteed and brokered by an outside government and an international court and with little more than a nod to the transactional nature of the democratic institutions in Stormont and London from which the main nationalist party absents itself.
On the other hand, unionists claim that British majoritarianism and a sovereign parliament must win out (for now) and nationalists will have to lump it. This applies not only to imposing the majority UK decision to withdraw from the EU and quit the single market and the customs union over the local Remain majority. It extends actively in the teeth of opposition beyond nationalism to considering an amnesty for former members of the security forces alone, a hot topic that hitherto had been part of a comprehensive consultation.
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
