A range of assaults on unionism, all of which should be challenged

This week, for example, the disaster of an internal trade border in the Irish Sea has been confirmed, for all Boris Johnson’s bluster, with the admission that there will be border posts for internal UK trade movements.

Brandon Lewis seems to think it will be OK if that is only one-way (GB to NI), but even if that was so (which isn’t clear, because the EU is insisting on some paperwork in the other direction) it would be an appalling development that no other major nation on Earth would tolerate within its territory.

Now the government has conceded ground in the Emma DeSouza campaign. In fact the concession announced yesterday was already part of the January Stormont deal, and can be justified on the grounds that it maintains a position that would have prevailed if the UK had stayed in Brexit. But many supporters of the campaign back a much wider push for change on nationality that confuses citizenship with identity.

Far from being justified by the 1998 Belfast Agreement, as is often claimed, it would be a divergence from it, as the former UUP MLA Dermot Nesbitt and Peter Weir have written on these pages. That must not happen, and it is to be hoped that this concession makes such change more unlikely.

There are no grounds for complacency with London. After all, if a government is not even prepared to defend its nation’s legacy in patiently resisting and ultimately outwitting three decades of republican terror, what will it defend? While the UK is scrambling to protect veterans and minimise legacy structures, it is doing nothing to combat IRA lies on the past.

Meanwhile, bafflingly, the PSNI has dropped Northern Ireland from its social media accounts, which they insist is innocent, but people are wary given that many changes across society are not.

And the relentless push to separate our Covid-19 response from the rest of the UK (and thus rest of NHS) continues.

Such assaults should be calmly identified and challenged.

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