According to source linked to below, about 2/3 of Unionists voted for Brexit in the Referendum. The checks on goods are the consequence of interpreting that vote as meaning leaving the single market, and holding the UK to the Good Friday Agreement.
https://twitter.com/EmmaVardyTV/status/1401182000283852805
I wonder what is going through the heads of those protesters? Are the 1/3 Remainer unionists in there, wishing there had been no Brexit in the first place, or a softer one?
Are the others feeling misled by their politicians or the Conservatives that they could not after all use Brexit to separate NI from Ireland? Do they realize that the Conservatives threw them under the Brexit bus and designed and signed the thing they are protesting about?
There are commentators I like and respect a great deal on here who operate on the basis of 'the voters are not wrong'. But Northern Irish pro Brexit unionists must surely test their faith in this.
What is talked about at the senior Tory dinner parties? Are they relaxed about what is happening, and see it as part of a strategy to dismantle the EU single market? Or to re-erect borders between Ireland and NI and dismantle the GFA?
Is this a continuity from views like those expressed in the Gove pamphlet that viewed the GFA as giving in, a way to wrestle an invigorated and more tightly bonded Union out of the clutches of the EU? Or is it simply neglect and indifference towards NI?
I think for NI alone, it is a very grave decision indeed to 'accept' or 'embrace' Brexit as currently formulated. Labour being forced for electoral reasons to fall in with this settlement for NI is, IMO, tragic and morally compromising.
Is there a hope that Brexit will help thwart NI ever leaving the union through a plebicite? Or a calculated risk that it might, but if it did we would be well shot of it and anyway the independence and sovereignty gains through diverging from the EU make it worth it?
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