Editorial: The Conservatives now need to end the cross-party consensus on Northern Ireland

​The Conservative Party meets in Manchester this weekend for the beginning of its annual conference.​

The gathering, a week after the Labour equivalent conference in nearby Liverpool, happens amidst a grave threat to the Tories.

The rise of Reform UK is such that it is predicted that Nigel Farage, who won only five Westminster seats last year, might in fact have an overall majority in the next general election (such a result could happen with him only getting a little more than 30% of the overall UK vote, just as Sir Keir Starmer won a seats landslide with a mere third of the votes – results that cast legitimacy doubts on the first-past-the-post electoral system).

But one thing the rise of Mr Farage has undoubtedly done is cast doubt on the failure of 14 years of Conservative rule to get the results you might expect from such a party in areas such as welfare reform, the size of the state, immigration and tackling woke extremism, such as on trans issues.

There is another area in which the Tories are due a major change of course, although it is far from clear if they will consider it, let alone take it: Northern Ireland.

It is understandable that the Conservatives, in the years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement, wanted to maintain a cross-party consensus on NI. It would have been perilous for the deal if one of the two big governing parties had begun to undermine it. But much is changed since then.

The Irish government has sued the UK on legacy (which is not merely aggressive, it is hypocritical). This legal action was appeased by Labour.

There is now an Irish Sea border. Cross-community protections were torn up to enshrine it.

Nationalists are working hard to break up the UK.

The Tories need to help plot a new way forward aside from a neutrality that has been used to undermine the UK’s ability to treat NI as an integral part of its territory.