Is this how Northern Ireland ends? Not in battle, but in scandal?
And not in a great scandal of corruption, but in a farcical affair of incompetence?
Enough DUP voters will go over, or back, to the UUP to make Sinn Féin the single largest party by sheer default.
It will then a nominate a First Minister who, by the simple passage of the generations, cannot have had any role in the Troubles.
And then, what?
None of this would make the profoundly sceptical Republic any more inclined to take on the Six Counties.
A member of Sinn Féin has no more chance of becoming Taoiseach than a member of the DUP has of becoming Prime Minister.
But behind all of this is the mounting sense that, whether or not the 26-County State wanted anything to do with Northern Ireland, the English were no longer prepared to pay for its farmers to make a profit out of heating their empty sheds.
If that meant that they were on their own, then they would be on their own.
Truly, the two sides in Northern Ireland are the ginger stepchildren of London and Dublin respectively.
It will then a nominate a First Minister who, by the simple passage of the generations, cannot have had any role in the Troubles.
And then, what?
None of this would make the profoundly sceptical Republic any more inclined to take on the Six Counties.
A member of Sinn Féin has no more chance of becoming Taoiseach than a member of the DUP has of becoming Prime Minister.
But behind all of this is the mounting sense that, whether or not the 26-County State wanted anything to do with Northern Ireland, the English were no longer prepared to pay for its farmers to make a profit out of heating their empty sheds.
If that meant that they were on their own, then they would be on their own.
Truly, the two sides in Northern Ireland are the ginger stepchildren of London and Dublin respectively.
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