If you want to understand what’s caused the last week of violence you have to tell a longer story about a longer crisis of loyalism. Here’s my piece from Thursday’s Newsnight, produced by @mihretyohannes.
And here’s the thing, you can’t tell that story without Brexit. Those saying that NI has always been unstable as if it’s exculpatory miss the point. It was exactly the point that NI was always fragile and that’s why so many urged caution when choosing a Brexit settlement.
Loyalists have (rightly or wrongly) felt aggrieved for a long time, an element of the community feeling they’ve come off worse in the peace process. There’s also the lingering existential feeling of slowly losing majority power. All of this would have been known...
...when the sea border was agreed to. It’s doubtless one of the reasons it was unacceptable to Theresa May. Loyalists also feel that nationalism saw off the land border with the threat of violence and that was the focus of the Brexit negotiations. Now here we are.
But it’s not as if the alternative was any better. Once the decision was made that single market/customs union membership was unacceptable to the Tory Party and (to a lesser extent) May’s deal was unacceptable to Parliament, a border somewhere...
...and with it a destabilisation of the NI settlement was inevitable. And up to this point half the problem up to this point has just been to get politicians to accept that inescapable fact.
Lots of off comparisons to the 70s abounding this week. History never a v good guide but insofar as there are parallels in terms of community dynamics it’s a bit more like the 1980s and the Anglo Irish Agreement: a change in political structures, roundly rejected by loyalism.
Difference now is loyalist consent is essential to make the political structures of NI work. Worse the main vehicle of loyalism (DUP) is in a position where they must help implement the Protocol whilst having every incentive to denounce it. A recipe for instability.
And all of this ahead of elections next year.
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