A NEW poll by Queen’s University this week shows that two-thirds of people here want the Stormont institutions back up and running on the basis of the Windsor Framework. 
While that figure remains stark and a rebuke to those who travel across the water to pretend that the Protocol is massively unpopular, it is an underscoring of reality and nothing new. The DUP’s continued boycotting of Stormont has always been a minority sport. 

But the new poll nevertheless provides uncomfortable reading for party leader Jeffrey Donaldson. A previous poll in February – pre-Windsor Framework – showed that 29 per cent of people here saw no potential economic benefits from the Protocol. This new poll shows a plunge in that cohort, with just 19 per cent of the population remainining convinced that keeping Stormont shut is the way forward.

This Tory administration has shown itself to be perhaps the most epically incompetent in the history of Great Britain, but in its cynical determination via the Windsor Framework to tidy at least part of its Brexit mess  by isolating the DUP and getting devolution back on track, it has played a blinder. 

Running alongside this new poll were two developments that will not only have Mr Donaldson shifting in his seat, but pulling at his collar. A special BBCNI report has shown that young people are turning away from the DUP and while attracting younger voters has never been a strength of the party, for them to be haemorrhaging what young people it has is not only a worry – it is an existential threat.

Unionism’s failure to attract young people, who are overwhelmingly more progressive in their outlook, can to a large extent be put down to the politics and demeanour of those with the loudest pro-union voices at the moment – a mixture of marginal and unelectable demagogues who are never happier than when they are surveying the latest wreckage that they have created. But what’s to account for one of the founder members of the DUP, Wallace Thompson, telling BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback that it’s time for Irish unity to be debated “openly and honestly”?

Mr Wallace is an evangelical Christian who has always put his faith first and foremost in both his life and his politics. But that has always been the case for Mr Wallace, who has been to the forefront of political and religious life here for a very long time. So clearly something has happened when at a time of great political upheaval he speaks of his openness to a unity debate with a candour which raised the eyebrows of the experienced Talkback host. And if someone who might be what the DUP consider a ‘banker’ when it comes to the union has stepped into the new Ireland space, then the ground is shifting below the party’s feet, even if they refuse to acknowledge it.
Mr Donaldson has a big choice: keep walking into the undergrowth or summon the courage to hack his own way out of it.