Brexit cannot loosen the interrelatedness of the islands of this archipelago

That secrecy should have surrounded those talks is hardly surprising given that all that could be expected by way of a unionist contribution to relations within this archipelago known to the classical geographers as Britannia, as Europe was Europa, would have been the usual unionist “no, no, no”.

Similarly it might be said of the making of the Prime Minister’s Brexit the first steps of which have been taken.

Whatever Brexit might loosen or, as Sam McBride suggests, “has loosened”, it cannot loosen the interrelatedness of the islands of the archipelago, no more than the break-up of the EU as it is at present (if it cannot politically and fiscally integrate further) can loosen the relatedness of Europe of which the EU is but the latest in attempts at forging some sort of unity.

Castlereagh his family home near Belfast, now a National Trust property, was involved in an earlier attempt at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 issuing in the Concert of Europe

London at the highest levels recognises this interrelatedness of the archipelago more than either Belfast or Dublin.

It does not treat citizens of the Republic resident in Gt Britain as foreigners, they had, to take one example, the vote in elections before there was ever an EU.

Another example would be the openness of recruitment into the regiments of the army or civil service.

The recent Nazi like denial in the Republic – in keeping with the totalitarian 1916 mindset — of the proposed RIC commemoration is the residue of what for long was presented as history in the schools of the Republic of Ireland.

The rise of Sinn Fein in Dublin might be just what Dublin needs to awaken it. It might also awaken Sinn Fein to the realization that it cannot budget as it wills.

It is part of an EU that it once opposed but now accepts.

That this acceptance was never queried or discussed in the media is not to its credit nor to the credit of a unionism entrapped in “no, no, no”.

W A Miller, Belfast BT13