Let’s hope the arrival of Chris Heaton-Harris as secretary of state points to new approach on Northern Ireland

In the 1980s an American politician in charge of education in the US government coined the phrase ‘the blob’.

He was referring to teaching unions and various vested interests that resisted his attempts at reform.

Michael Gove, when he became UK education minister, encountered the same resistance, and he too adopted the term ‘blob’ for that amorphous group which seemed able to thwart any reform of schools and teaching.

Something similar happens in Northern Ireland when it comes to helping unionism. Every time a UK minister is appointed to the Northern Ireland Office who seems like they might stand up to culture of neutrality in the NIO in the face of a nationalist Irish Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), it seems to go nowhere. There are matters on which London occasionally stands firm, but an overall ‘blob’ resists any significant movement away from neutral NIO instincts.

Therefore it is hard to be particularly optimistic about the new prime minister Liz Truss’s appointment of Chris Heaton-Harris as secretary of state. He is a Brexiteer, and so the unionist hope is that this means he will stand up against the Northern Ireland Protocol. But given that since 1985 secretaries of state have latterly seemed keen to present themselves as neutral brokers between nationalists and unionists, there is good reason to be wary that any appointment will represent a break from that tradition. We might even find that a Brexiteer has been appointed merely to make unionists think that there is a secretary of state on their side.

Let’s hope that Mr Heaton-Harris’s elevation is a sign that Ms Truss really does want to stand up to the EU on the protocol, and also to break with a mushy political consensus that rarely works in a way that helps supporters of the UK.

Yesterday the pro nationalist Irish minister Simon Coveney tweeted a welcome to Mr Heaton-Harris on his appointment but ended by more or less telling him to restore devolution, Rather than rushing into that, the arrival of a ‘new broom’ is time for clear-eyed thinking on the ways in which Stormont can and will be used to damage the Union.