IT’S right that as the march towards a border poll gathers pace there are no – or at least vanishingly few – voices calling for a hasty referendum. There are many who instinctively yearn for a change to the failed status quo to take place next year, or the year after that because a century-plus of conflict and division tends to make people impatient when the prospect of a better future starts to hove into view.

But Brexit was a salutary lesson not only to Britain as it comes to terms with its increasing impoverishment and a devastating plunge in its global prestige, it has convinced those in favour of Irish unity that a rush to judgement on the question of the union would only store up a grim harvest for the future.

But what of those who contend that we need to ‘make Northern Ireland work’? What of those who argue that the United Kingdom offers everyone in the North a better future for themselves, their families and their community? We contend that that ship has sailed, that the opportunity to convince nationalists, republicans and Catholics that they can finally have a place at the table from which they were excluded for so long has come and gone. We believe that disillusionment with partition is so deeply ingrained that it is impossible for unionism to win over a sufficient number to bring about the community cohesion that is vital for the union to survive – a community cohesion which the unionist majority not only never sought but actively worked to stymie.

But even if it is a long shot, unionist leaders are at some stage going to have to stop impotently wailing about the new Ireland zeitgeist and start offering non-unionists in the North a vision of what it might mean for them finally to feel at home – and that is the sine qua non of this place’s position in the United Kingdom. The question arises as we enter a time of year when those of a non-Protestant persuasion see their indifference or hostility to partition rise exponentially with every beat of a Lambeg drum, every flag on a lamppost and every note from a Kick the Pope band.

Far from moving towards a rethink of the marching season and its debilitating effect on community relations, we have seen this year an upping of the ante as loyalist paramilitary flags have gone up in mixed areas. The explanation for it is simple enough: the unionists and loyalist people feel beleaguered and threatened and some are reacting with displays of self-defeating, nihilistic defiance.

They have been brought to this negative place by the utter failure of their political leaders to predict the damage that the rush to Brexit might inflict on their status as UK citizens and the shot in the arm that the resultant chaos would be for the prospect of Irish unity.

But flying UVF flags outside supermarkets used by all sections of the community is a statement of weakness, not strength, and flying UVF flags outside the ‘national’ stadium is a neat summation of partition after a century and an eloquent comment on the current will for a ‘new Northern Ireland’.