THERE is one universal truth that can always be depended upon in British politics, as sure as the Pole Star: the rest of the UK consistently underestimates Northern Ireland.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Scotland, Wales, or England, the average citizen forgets there’s a fourth wheel on this shambolic bus named Britain. That little stretch of water called the Irish Sea seems to embody the notion of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. 

This willful blindness and amnesia have been the cause of a lot of pain - both for Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain. It allowed Ulster to fester in sectarianism from its creation in 1921 until hatred and violence exploded in 1969 into an ethnic civil war which the rest of Britain euphemistically dubbed ‘The Troubles’, as if mass murder for 30 years was some little local difficulty.

The inevitable blow-back saw the IRA bring its campaign of violence to the British mainland, and the deaths of British soldiers in the streets and fields of Ulster.

The same wilful blindness and amnesia lay at the heart of Brexit, with Tories - the guardians of the union, don’t you know - creating a border between Ulster and the rest of the UK in the Irish Sea, and thereby putting the entire peace process and the Good Friday Agreement in jeopardy.

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