Whatever happened to British pride.
That we signed the protocol at all is shameful but, given the treasonous behaviour of Parliament at the time it is understandable. Now is the time to assert control over this part of Britain which the Irish so covet.
Article 16 is a lawful route to the solution to a problem that need never arisen were it not for the duplicitous behaviour of our own Prime Minister (Mrs May).
Lord Frost should now tell the EU what Mrs May should have told them at the time, that Northern Ireland will remain sovereign territory. That the border must lie between the North and South of Ireland and that if the EU wishes to make that a hard border, then that is their prerogative.
Nothing else will do and nothing else will convince the EU that we mean business.

How to deal with the EU
EU: It’s May’s Backstop or No Deal!
[off stage: Remoaner cheering]
Boris: OK then, No Deal
EU (Little Leo V): Oh! Er.. OK we will get rid of the Backstop then
[sound of crying at the BBC]
Some months later…
EU (Barnier): It’s either an ECJ controlled partnership agreement or a basic FTA
Boris: The FTA please
EU (Barnier, Shocked): But an FTA without ECJ control in not possible!
Boris: OK No Deal
EU (VdL): OK here’s a comprehensive FTA with no ECJ involvement
[weeping at the Financial Times]
Some months later…
Frost: The NI Protocol isn’t working
EU: The NI Protocol can’t be changed. Implement it!
Frost: No thanks. We are not going to implement it. What’s more, if you don’t rethink the NI Protocol, we’re out.
EU: OK we will change it. Here is Jacob Rees Mogg’s and Iain Duncan Smith’s Max Fac approach that we laughed at in 2019. How’s that?
Frost: We’ll think about it. I’ll ask the boss when he’s back from his painting holiday.
[Andrew Adonis shoots himself]

A bit of Brexit realism would have improved the article. There were only ever five ways of squaring Northern Ireland with Brexit: Binding commitment to EU product standards in Britain, border in the Irish sea, border on land, border betwen Ireland and France, or free access for UK goods to the EU with the UK free to disregard EU rules and regulations at will. Which one is the author proposing?

“A large exception: Ireland’s most remarkable novelist, Colm Toibin, who in a Guardian column asked of the anti-British, pro-United Ireland/Sinn Fein crowd: “do they want to import sectarian hatred and the politics of perpetual grievance from the north into the south”?”

To which one might respond, “If they do, why not shove it their way with both hands before they change their minds?” (Sorry, unionists…)

If the written agreement of the UK government that Northern Ireland should be deemed to be part of the Single Market and within the jurisdiction of the ECJ was a “wound to Britain’s sovereignty”, then it was a self-inflicted wound, taken on the chin in order to secure a result that was considered to be desirable, and also in order to win a UK general election.

Quite sympathetic to Lloyd’s take, but the reality is that the hated protocol was negotiated by the very UK government that now wants to repudiate it. Lloyd conveniently elides this issue.

Oh dear. Another day, another irredeemably biased, poorly-informed and self-pitying article from a Brexiter. 
Where to start with this thoroughly muddled and incoherent article?
Let’s run through its various flaws:
First, it has a clickbait strapline which is not adequately explored in the article.
Second, it’s hopelessly biased – in an era where ongoing street disorder is largely the preserve of the author’s intellectual fellow-travellers, NI’s violent Brexiter extremists, the author, remarkably, sees fit to ignore that completely and to bang on instead about the IRA, a bunch of retired and redundant old guys whose organisation ceased to exist sometime in the last century. 
Third, it cherry-picks support from Irish figures who are viewed as political clowns in their own country.
Fourth, and this is by far the worst of its various failings, it fails to understand how the vast majority of ordinary Unionists and ordinary so-called “Nationalists” think. Accordingly, his article is a response to something which doesn’t even exist. The author is arguing with the voices in his head. 
From the top then:
1            THE EMOTIVE CLICKBAIT STRAPLINE:
First, his article suffers from a clickbait strapline: “Unionism is being demonised to benefit the EU”; and “Ireland’s Brexit blackmail”. “Demonised”; “blackmail” – both words straight out of a right-wing tabloid propaganda playbook. 
The article then fails to develop this theme. Who, precisely, is “demonising” Unionism? And how on earth would any such demonising, even if it did exist, “benefit” the EU?
We’re not informed, as, having made such a self-pitying and ridiculous assertion, the author then fails to define what being “demonised” means to him, and how, for instance, being “demonised” differs from being merely “disagreed with”.
For decades, an extremist, bible-thumping, hard-right, socially-reactionary (I remember children’s swings in council playgrounds chained and padlocked on Sundays to ensure that the Catholics properly would observe the Lord’s day lol) Unionism ruled the roost in the North, until the British government, fed up with their rotten borough mismanagement of NI, pulled the rug from under them in 1972 when they shut down the Unionist-dominated local govt in NI and imposed direct rule from London. I suppose the author might consider that that action by the British govt was part of this great campaign of “demonisation” too lol. 
Since then, Unionism’s psyche resembles that of a Daily Fail reader on acid – paranoia, self-pity and outrage all on continual display.
That mindset is one that struggles to see the difference between being disagreed with and being demonised. If your mentality that, according to the bible, you’re right about everything, and that compromise is sinful, then any form of disagreement is viewed inevitably through a prism of outrage and maudlin self-pity, and you consider that you’re being “demonised”.
It’s all rather pitiable, as these people really are struggling to live in the modern world. The author notes, correctly, how few friends they have in the wider world (apart from Mossad, and in former times, apartheid-era S. Africa, both of whom supplied Unionist paramilitaries with weapons), and apart from a few widely-disregarded hard-right British Nationalist cranks and fan-boys such as Gudgin Pin and Baseless Bassett.   
Ireland’s Brexit “blackmail”? Blackmail is when you pressure someone to do something they do not wish to do, by threatening to disclose an incriminating secret if they do not comply. 
This is an extraordinary assertion. Who, precisely, is “blackmailing” whom? The author doesn’t say. Are the Irish “blackmailing” somebody? Is the EU? What secrets are they threatening to disclose? What is the precise basis of all this “blackmailing”? The author gives no details of any “blackmail” whatsoever; yet us content to let a ridiculous slur word hang out there, entirely unsubstantiated.
What, for instance, has Unionism done that it did not wish to do? Unionists, freely and voluntarily, voted for Brexit, and the borders that inevitably follow when you vote to leave a trading union. They were not “blackmailed” into voting for Brexit; they wanted to vote for more and harder borders, that was the whole point of the miserable Brexit caper. This current balls-up is all on them and on the Brexiters. At least, folks, be adult enough to own the consequences of your own actions!  Mrs. May had a Brexit on offer which would have obviated the need for an economic sea border. Unionist MPs voted to reject this. Nobody “blackmailed” them into doing so; they wanted to dump May and her pragmatic deal which would have ensured no economic sea border. Instead, they supported Johnson, who then negotiated the current deal, the one that Unionists also disagree with (incidentally, can anybody remember the last time the Unionists willingly agreed to anything?!). However, the Unionists are the full authors of their own misfortune here. Had they not been so quick to assist in putting Mrs. May in the political dustbin, they would not now have any sea border issues. Or Is the author saying that the British govt was blackmailed into signing the current deal? 
Blackmail my foot. Unionism is not being blackmailed, and never was. Instead, it is making a series of disastrous tactical errors, all by itself. 
Obviously, Unionism is being disagreed with, at home and abroad. The reason for this is that their “position” is falling apart under the weight of its own internal contradictions. Their position makes no logical or strategic sense, not even from their own pro-Union perspective, and I develop the theme of Unionism’s strategic own-goals below.  
2            Mr. LLOYD’S EVIDENT BIAS, AND HIS BIZARRE “ELDERLY WHITE BLOKE” FIXATION ON THE IRA
There is a certain type of right-wing elderly Englishman who will never tire of re-living WW2 and endlessly “re-defeating Jerry” in his head. Similarly, there is also a cohort of white blokes of a certain vintage who almost seem to regret that the IRA no longer exists. Deprived of the IRA’s existence, they have one less bogeyman to write lurid headlines about; and so, they start to fantasise about the IRA’s continuing existence. Drew Harris, current head of the Irish police, is a Unionist and former head of the now-banned RUC, and even he merely said that the IRA’s structures “remained in a much-reduced form”, that it is “not actively recruiting” and that “its leadership is committed to achieving a united Ireland through peaceful means”. May I quote you the 2008 conclusion from the Independent Monitoring Commission, the body established by the British and Irish govts to monitor paramilitary activity after the Good Friday deal in 1998: “the IRA “by deliberate choice is no longer operational or functional”.  May I quote you the 2015 assessment by the head of the Irish police, wherein they formally stated that they: “had no information or intelligence that the Provisional IRA still maintains its military structure”. Is it time you guys really moved on from your bizarre fixation about the IRA?  
It really is unbalanced in the extreme that, in an era of street disorder by the author’s Brexiter-Unionist intellectual fellow-travellers, the author can dredge up references to a moribund IRA while completely ignoring the ongoing campaign of street violence and intimidation by Unionism’s Brexiter’s thugs(!). 
There is of course a long and ignoble history of Unionism resorting to violence and intimidation when the UK democracy they profess to be “loyal” to functions in ways that they disagree with, for instance:
– In 1912, the UK govt published home rule bill for Ireland. In response, Ulster’s Unionists signed the Ulster Covenant, established a terrorist organisation, the UVF, to resist the UK parliament, and smuggled in 25,000 rifles and between 3 and 5 million rounds of ammunition from Germany to Larne. In the subsequent settlement after the Anglo-Irish war, the British govt excluded the northern counties and partitioned the country. 
– In 1974, the UK govt established a power-sharing executive, under the Sunningdale Agreement. In response, Ulster’s Unionists – the Ulster Unionist Party, the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party and the Democratic Unionist Party – formed the pro-strike United Ulster Unionist Council; and called a general strike to oppose power sharing. The strike was managed by the Ulster Workers’ Council and Ulster Army Council, which were formed shortly after the Agreement’s signing. Both of these groups included loyalist paramilitaries such as the UDA and the UVF. These groups helped to enforce the strike by blocking roads and intimidating workers. Ballylumford power station provided electricity to Belfast and most territory East of the Bann, and so those parts were without power during the strike. I remember my Dad and Uncles, chainsaws in the boot to cut through felled trees. During the strike, loyalist paramilitaries killed 39 civilians, of whom 33 died in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The UK government abandoned power sharing. 
– In 1985, the UK government signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Ireland. In response, Ulster’s Unionists established 2 new paramilitary forces, the Third Force and Ulster Resistance. Ulster Resistance was launched at a 3000-strong invitation-only meeting at the Ulster Hall. The rally was chaired by the Democratic Unionist Party Press Officer Sammy Wilson and addressed by party colleagues Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster. Also on the platform was Alan Wright, the chairman of the Ulster Clubs. Ulster Resistance’s aims were to “take direct action as and when required” to end the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The group imported, via Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, over 200 automatic assault rifles, 94 automatic pistols, 12+ RPG-7s and circa 150 warheads, 400 – 500 RGD-5 fragmentation grenades and over 30,000 rounds of ammunition. The daughter of one of the gun runners, Noel Little, is a current DUP politician.
– In 2020-21, the UK government signed an anti-trade deal, known as “Brexit”, to increase red tape with the EU on the ground of sovereignty. Logically, once you leave the EU, there has to be a border *somewhere* with the EU, given that the South of Ireland is part of the EU (doh). So as not to: (i) breach the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (‘GFA’); (ii) cripple North-South trade and cross-border communities; and (iii) annoy the pro-GFA Americans and thereby jeopardise a trade deal with them; it was felt that a limited sea border could be put in place between GB and NI. In response, Ulster’s Unionists consulted extensively with Loyalist paramilitaries on their Brexit strategy; and subsequently used rabble-rousing talk (“betrayal”, “anger”) to oppose the Brexit deal they originally voted for. Now, in the new customs facilities in Larne, Loyalists are threatening staff; and Loyalists once again are on the streets, doing what they do best, using violence when they feel let down by British democracy.
Former Unionist MP, Lord David Trimble publicly warned us that, in opposing Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, there is “real potential for those who have engaged in past violence to take action again”; and Loyalists are out setting fire to buses and threatening to march on Nationalist areas – as if the Remain voting Nationalists somehow are to blame for Unionism’s perceived Brexit difficulties.
At best, such public “warnings” are irresponsible. At worst, they’re cynical rabble-rousing. So-called respectable conservative Unionist politicians are fomenting the disorder that they pretend to be “appalled” by. In reality, it’s a logical outworking of their cynical rhetoric over the last months, and it’s entirely disingenuous for them to affect “surprise” at the disorder, to blame it on Loyalist “frustration”.
Does anyone really think that a bunch of layabouts in athleisure would even be aware of the nuances of non-tariff barriers and customs procedures, still less be exercised by them, were it not for a prior, daily drip-feed of rhetoric about “losing their Britishness”?
3            Mr. LLOYD’S CHERRY-PICKED CITING OF IRISH PUNDITS WHO HAVE NO POLITICAL CREDIBILITY IN IRELAND
For instance, the author seeks to support his inchoate positions by citing the likes of the writer Colm Tóibín and the former Irish diplomat, Ray Bassett.
Unfortunately for the author, politically, both blokes have zero credibility in Ireland. Tóibín, a posh middle-class bloke who lives mainly in LA, is a fine writer of fiction, but utterly out of his depth when attempting to stray, in his trademark pompous and muddled manner, into modern Irish politics. I read that same article by Tóibín, the one cited with such alacrity by the author. Predictably, it was a very muddled article. In it, Tóibín purports to compare Sinn Féin (a pro-EU, pro-immigration, centre-left party) to UKIP (an anti-EU, anti-immigration, right wing party). That apocalyptic anti-Republican mindset (Tóibín’s statement in his article that SF in 2021 is a “spectre” and a “tide”) is widespread among older members of the Southern Irish upper middle-class, who psychologically are often unable to rid themselves of decades of anti-Republican prejudice. This was fostered by previous Irish governments who, courtesy of Section 31 of the 1960 Broadcasting Authority Act, enthusiastically operated the most draconian anti-Republican censorship in Western Europe. In that article, Tóibín approvingly cited a Unionist who explained his opposition to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement on the basis that “The Dublin government suddenly had a say in the affairs of Northern Ireland, but no one in the North could vote to remove the Dublin government” and that “this opposition to arbitrary authority was at the very heart of Protestant identity.” Of course, the considerable irony, which Colm misses entirely, is that the London government has a major say in the affairs of the North (such as forcing Brexit on a region that voted against it) – and nobody in NI can vote to remove them either. 
As for Allsorts Bassett, give me a break : ) Complete clown. The guy lives in London and is British establishment in everything but name. He’s a senior member of very right wing, anti-EU British think tank; he lives full time in London and, on his website, he can’t even bring himself to describe himself as Irish, choosing instead to describe himself as “Dublin born”.    
Bassett, also a self-proclaimed expert on folic acid, lives full-time in London and is a Senior Fellow at the Policy Exchange, a right-wing British think tank. Its website states that it is “completely independent”. Fact check: it is funded secretly by big business and has strong links to the Tory party.
The Policy Exchange’s website states that “the authority and credibility of our research is our greatest asset”. In a rambling June 2017 Policy Exchange Report lauding Brexit and quoting Donald
Trump with approval, Bassett stated that Ireland’s “two largest export markets are the UK and the USA”. Fact check: they’re not. The (not un-typical) 2015 Irish export percentages show that around 35% of Irish exports were to the EU (excluding the UK), 24% were to the US and slightly less than 14% were to the UK.
The Policy Exchange’s website boasts that it makes “workable policy recommendations”. In 2008, The Policy Exchange suggested that Northern English cities such as Liverpool and Sunderland had failed and that northerners should migrate to the south. No further comment, though David Cameron described the report as “complete rubbish” and “insane”.
Frankly, one wonders exactly what kind of acid you’d need to be expert in to take the likes of “Oiwish” Bassett seriously.
4            Mr. LLOYD DOES NOT UNDERSTAND MODERN NORTHERN IRISH PEOPLE  
Fourth, and this is an unforgivable error by the author, Mr. Lloyd simply does not understand how the vast majority of ordinary Unionists and ordinary so-called “Nationalists” think.  
If you want to understand how the DUP increasingly represent nobody but the DUP, read on:
In N Ireland, the local Unionist Brexiters of the DUP party, out of an emotional desire to strengthen a (British) Union, voted against a (European) Union. Sounds almost comically dumb; is dumb. Think about it. The North of Ireland still is a place of divergent political allegiances, Irish and British. On a day-to-day basis, without anyone saying too much about it, prior to Brexit, *these had largely ceased to matter*, since common British and Irish membership of the EU afforded an over-arching soft identity and polity that allowed trade and theoretically-divergent political aspirations and identities comfortably to mingle and to co-exist. Continuing EU membership meant that the Irish community in the North of Ireland, who are in theory opposed to to a union with Britain, were nonetheless de facto increasingly comfortable with continuing in a union with Britain. Free movement of goods and people meant that the border had in practical terms ceased to matter. While many pro Irish unity folk would always of course say (if questioned about it) that they would like a united Ireland at some indeterminate point in the future, privately they would admit that there were now no obvious downsides to being in the UK either. In that way, for most of the Irish community North of the Irish border, Irish unity had been relegated to a manana project.
Increasingly, whatever about their political theory, in practice, Sinn Féin (the pro Irish unity party in the North of Ireland) were de facto committed to making N Ireland work. This is a critical point, barely recognised outside of the North, and, obviously, complete news to Mr. Lloyd.
The DUP simply weren’t shrewd or perceptive enough to realise this massive step-change in pro Irish unity real world thinking. Instead, in an error of catastrophic proportions for the North’s British Unionists, the reliably-choleric DUP knee-jerked emotionally and blindly to their opponent’s sacred cow mantras, and to their opponents’ actions from 40 years earlier, while failing utterly to realise the surprisingly pro-Union (with GB) de facto nature of their opponent’s current working realities. From a pro-union with GB perspective, it was an unforgivable error. One of the first rules in any competitive situation, whether it’s in business or in politics, is that you must know your opponent. What do they say they want? What do they really want? What are they happy to live with? What is their bottom line? What matters to them, and why? Obviously, that level of knowledge obliges you to think with a cold head, to think rationally and strategically, to treat your opponents with a serious amount of respect, and be prepared to adopt a satisfactory compromise position. Very obviously, the absolutist DUP has shown itself entirely devoid of any of those capabilities. Unfortunately for the DUP and for Brexiters in general, hampered as they are by half a century of cultural apocalypticism and a simplistic, proto-Trumpian, binary solution mindset, their knowledge of N Ireland’s pro-Irish unity community’s real day-to-day priorities and motivations is unforgivably poor, and seemingly derives largely from their own cartoonish and outdated stereotypes, and from their own fears and fevered imaginings. Their ability to formulate nuanced and far-sighted strategy in their own political interest seems largely absent.
As a recent perceptive article by the London School of Economics notes:
“Brexit has made a united Ireland – though far from inevitable, and, according to some polls, only at the margins – an increasingly immediate and concrete proposition … Brexit has left the party in a position of political strength unprecedented in its history, and its primary policy goal of Irish unity closer than at any time since Ireland was partitioned 100 years ago.“
However, any eejit could have foreseen that much (although, as noted above, some DUP eejits certainly didn’t) – the really interesting bit is what that LSE article then notes:
“However, far from having viewed Brexit as a wedge issue, to be leveraged in the pursuit of constitutional transformation, we have found that it has instead been overwhelmingly viewed within Sinn Féin as a threat to be managed. Especially in its potential to disrupt the openness of the Irish border, Brexit has represented grave political, economic, social and existential risks, which have been most acutely felt by nationalist voters in sections of Sinn Féin’s core constituency, including in the border counties and multiply deprived communities in Belfast and Derry. Throughout the Brexit process between 2016 and 2019, the party was principally concerned with contesting Brexit policy rather than with using Brexit as an opportunity for polity contestation. As one former Sinn Féin MLA neatly summarised: ‘We are in this dilemma that actually the harder Brexit is, I suspect, the more support there will be for a United Ireland. But despite that, we are trying to mitigate or ameliorate the worst aspects of Brexit.‘”
That’s the un-recognised real-politik of Sinn Féin in 2021. Despite being in theory working for a united Ireland, they’re nonetheless trying to make the North work. They know well that their voters will no longer stand for anything – be it bombs or unhinged political policies such as Brexit – which interfere with people’s day to day economic prospects.
The contrast with Unionism, which is in theory supposed to be “committed” to Northern Ireland, could hardly be any more stark. In 2019, the DUP leader, Sir Geoffrey Donaldson, said that he “could live with 40,000 jobs lost as a result of Brexit“. What sort of headcase politician says that? What sort of voters even allow a politician to say that without electoral consequences?
Gone are the days when British Unionists (as opposed to European Unionists, like me) could be said to be “more loyal to the half crown than to the crown“. These days, the DUP are a party of detached ideologues, psychologically reliant on handouts from Britain, and whose extremist fixation on a “pure” hard Brexit has put them on a collision course with local business leaders of all political persuasions. In fact, I’ve long suspected that the DUP has a vested interest in keeping NI economically weak – they view economic weakness as a defence against possible unity with the South of Ireland, as it allows them to say to the South: “unity will cost you too much“. That is, the DUP is wedded to poverty and dependency as a way to ensure that they nonetheless can continue to live under the right colour of flag. Whereas, not to mince my words here, provided it’s not rubbed in their face, many pro Irish unity folk will happily live under any damned flag provided we can get on with making a good living. As the late John Hume remarked, “you can’t eat a flag“.
Historically, from the time of Punch cartoons onwards, Britain viewed the Irish in the way that old-style sexist males viewed women, i.e., overly-emotional and unpredictable. Ironically, these days, the perma-petulant British Brexiters (count the number of times “outrage” and “fury” appears in British popular press articles about the EU – a quick Google search of “outrage daily express” pulled up no less than 17,400,000 results lol), including the DUP, are the Romantic emotional extremists, lost in a fog of “pure British sovereignty at all costs” (literally at any cost), and increasingly adrift from mundane-but-vital economic realities; and it’s the Irish who are the hard-headed realists, more concerned with the economy than with first world problems such as notional identities and f***ing flags.
When Brexit happened, the DUP voted for the hardest possible Brexit. They did that out of a desire to strengthen the union with Britain; and I don’t doubt their sincerity of purpose for a moment. However, stategically, it was a spectacular own goal. Brexit makes the Union with Britain more difficult. It can’t do anything else. A vote for Brexit is a vote for more and harder borders – that’s essentially what Brexit is – more borders, more red-tape.
***It’s worth posing the central question – in what ways did the DUP think that making the Union with Britain more difficult would strengthen the Union with Britain?***
In reality, a vote to remain in the EU would have strengthened the Union with Britain. Even a vote for the half-way house Protocol, which keeps NI fully in the UK and still gives porous access to the EU, would strengthen the Union with Britain.
In short, anything which makes cross-border economic and social life easier for NI’s pro Irish unity population strengthens the Union with Britain.
However, the DUP’s rationale, if one could call it that, seems to have been: “Let’s piss off the pro united Ireland population as much as possible; let’s make NI difficult and unworkable for them; that’s bound to convince them of the merits of the Union with GB!” The DUP failed completely to realise that many in the pro Irish unity camp were de facto in the pro Union with Britain camp already. That is, the DUP based its strategy on what it thought its opponents were, as opposed to what they actually were. As an analysis failure, as a policy failure, that takes some beating; and is explicable entirely by the DUP’s comfortable bigotry which ensures that it views its political opponents through the the narrow prism of its own ingrained prejudices, and acts accordingly, generally taking the wrong option every time.
This ability to paint themselves into corners (and then to blame the paint-brush) is irrational to an extent that almost defies explanation. The DUP’s Brexit antics derive from a tedious mix of self-pity, white cultural nostalgia, impotent rage and chronic insecurity. The DUP’s Brexit “policy” is a perfect example of how to cut off your nose to spite your face.
Sadly, internationally, and within England, it’s generally not recognised just how unrepresentative the DUP are of the majority of people in the North of Ireland. Not only do the DUP not represent the Irish community in the North of Ireland, they don’t even represent all of the British community in NI either, and this is especially true of the British community who live away from Belfast, closer to the EU border.
Recently, leading Belfast Brexiter, Jamie Bryson, brought a bus-load of Brexiter bandsmen and assorted yahoos to Enniskillen (a rural town near the EU-Irish border) for a “massive show of strength against the Protocol“. Fermanagh is a county with lots of Unionist people, so Jamie thought he was on to a winner. However, hardly anybody showed up, and egg-on-face Bryson was left sermonising to his bussed-in rent-a-mob while sensible local Unionists ignored them in their droves. So much for Boris Johnson’s government’s b/s about “community tensions“.
In that context, it is instructive to read an editorial in Co. Fermanagh’s main pro-Union (with GB) newspaper, The Impartial Reporter. It’s much more reflective of a pragmatic border (GB) Unionist view of Brexit / the Protocol:
“Everything changed with the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement and movement back and forth became easier; indeed better than ever and people returned to a more normal life. People just want to get on with their lives and we’ve become used to it.
The impact that the previous Border had for decades was enormous. It would be madness to go back to the Border of the past with all its difficulties.
Yet, one gets the impression that Jamie Bryson and Jim Allister would quite welcome such a scenario here, whatever the inconvenience for people in this area. Bryson, according to Twitter found the journey to Enniskillen “quite the trek” and was thankful for a SatNav. He’s distant from the problems here.
This smacks of a sense of entitlement from a certain constituency of loyalism, which hasn’t quite grasped the changes which have taken place in Northern Ireland, both in terms of the demographic and the attitudes, particularly among younger people that the old symbols of past division aren’t as relevant to modern life for them as they were.”
Remember, the above is a take on Brexit and the EU *from a Northern Irish British Unionist*. It’s a million miles away from the cynically-hyped and over-stated “unrest” and “disruption” hyperbole of the DUP and Mr. Johnson’s Brexit organ grinder’s monkey, Lord Frost. That pragmatic viewpoint is widely shared between the British and Irish communities in NI, and especially by people West of the Bann, people who would have to live with the border fallout from the British government’s unprincipled chicanery. It’s galling to listen to the British government claiming to “represent” NI. They do not. With half an an eye on throwing some red meat to their reliably EU-hating base (as a way to distract from the as yet un-materialised “benefits of Brexit” – whatever they might amount to), the British government is merely using the North, and hyped-up concerns about the role of the ECJ (a complete non-issue in NI), respectively as a pawn and a distraction in a cynical Brexiter spat with the EU. Johnson, or the traditional East of the Bann British Unionists, or the careerist top brass of the DUP? None of them give a flying fig about the everyday lives and prosperity of people affected by the border.
Mr. Lloyd’s article is a puff article, devoid of serious content or serious intent. He does not know what he’s talking about, and until he can see past the prism of his own last-century stereotypes, he’d be better advised to come live in NI, talk to local people outside Belfast, and make some effort to understand the reality behind the old stereotypes.  

Progressives don’t like democracy. What’s new?