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We need more of this kind of book https://twitter.com/acallan87/status/1273243224992342018
Lack of recent books on partition is pronounced and those that have been published (so far as I’m aware) are largely negative.
It may be that much of unionism has decided to put 1921-1998 behind it, instead standing its feet on the consent principle in the Belfast Agreement - ‘we have them on the hook of consent’ says Trimble.
Whether or not one thinks this is a good move, it’s important to realise that it is not a vindication of partition since 1921.
Partition was never about Northern Ireland, it was about unionists wishing to remain in the United Kingdom.
That this has been conceded, instead the objective shifting to keeping Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, a little understood or commented on consequence of the agreement.
A consequence of which is that unionism stands or falls with Northern Ireland — something seen in the absence in the agreement of legal instruments to reform the United Kingdom in the future if a border poll is lost.
The asymmetry here an implicit rejection of the unionist case during the various home rule crises through to partition.
