A internal sea border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK that looked alarming enough on paper is even worse in reality

It is much harder to advise a way forward. After all, unionists know they either acquiesce or be punished.

When the IRA intensified its terror in early 1972, Stormont was prorogued, despite all key civil rights demands having been met (most of them indeed by the end of 1960s).

When unionists and Alliance tried to work Stormont in the rolling devolution plan of 1982, but nationalists shunned it, the result was an Anglo Irish Agreement for the boycotters.

When David Trimble made all the jumps he was expected to make after 1998, the IRA delayed and delayed on decommissioning, spied at Stormont and broke into Castlereagh — until everyone was punished via Stormont’s suspension.

When Sinn Fein decided it would collapse Stormont in 2017, it was unionists who paid in the form of concessions, not the political vandals themselves.

Thus any radical unionist action now will probably be punished by a London which did nothing to penalise SF after 2017. Yet unionists can hardly ignore what is happening.

It now transpires that tractors can’t travel Great Britain to Northern Ireland without a further bureaucratic hurdle. This on top of the military now having to notify the EU and Nato of internal movements. Tomorrow it will be something else.

What looked alarming on paper now is all the more shocking in reality: the island is being treated as a completely different agricultural, sanitary and econonmic unit from Great Britain. This will lead to a push for EU representation for NI via Dublin, and one day a political crisis if that is not agreed.

Boris Johnson does not deserve to spend a day in office after this scandal but most people in GB are only vaguely aware of what happens here. And even in NI most people did not understand it until the results were visible.

The UUP has come forward with a plan that will cause Downing Street little angst. However such ideas are welcome and needed if an agreed course of action is ever to emerge.

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