Letters: Failure to articulate the case for the Union

Large organisations often adopt a “mission statement” to encapsulate their purpose and ethos. I don’t know whether the Northern Ireland Office has any such statement, and often ponder what it might say were it to exist.

The primary purpose of government is to uphold the territorial boundaries of the state and to promote the continuing well-being of its people. Sadly the Northern Ireland Office fails lamentably in these objectives. Can any reader think of any policy initiative over the last fifty years that was designed to promote the Union? Rather all policies have been aimed at mollifying ever more rapacious nationalist demands. Dame Arlene Foster incurred the wrath of some observers for using a reptilian simile to reflect this fact. Perhaps she got too close to the truth!

Successive Secretaries of State have failed to articulate the case for the Union. Devoid of a clear vision of the ultimate destination the NIO cannot formulate coherent strategy. The consequence is that no one places any trust in any minister once placed in that department. When in doubt their tendency is to kick the can down the path!

The aim for the Good Friday Agreement was, though securing the constitutional guarantee, to remove the need for political discourse to gravitate to the constitutional. This was always likely to prove rather optimistic! The Agreement was undermined as nationalists gravitated towards apologists for terrorism. This process was completed by the Protocol, which negated the constitutional guarantee. The 1998 edifice now stands built on sand.

Irish politicians’ mischief making continues unabated! If they cared at all about Northern Ireland they would desist from interfering in its affairs. I am reminded of Shakespeare (Henry VI Part II) “Hide not thy poison with such sugared words! Lay not thy hands on me, forbear I say! Their touch affrights me as a serpent’s sting!” The decision of the Secretary of State to hold talks with the Irish Foreign Minister only serves to encourage continuing Irish interference further stoking community tensions.

With no stated end date the UK has over many months feebly endeavoured with singular lack of success to re-negotiate the Protocol. Agreement with the EU is only attainable at the midnight hour. There is no rational basis for the belief that the EU will willingly concede restoration of UK sovereignty in Northern Ireland. Nothing less will make possible the re-establishment of devolution. Continuation of a futile “negotiation roundabout” drives such re-establishment increasingly towards the domain of the impossible.

Unionism must now focus on an election on a date as yet uncertain. During my first election campaign in 1975 the then three unionist parties co-operated to good effect under the umbrella of the UUUC. The potential of a similar structure requires consideration today. Additionally, there is a need for unionists to work together in the long term promotion of the Union, and, until the Protocol is terminated, to devise suitable lawful means whereby ordinary electors can feel engaged in the process of making manifest their rejection of it.

Jeremy Burchill, North Yorkshire