The fate of partying premier Boris Johnson may be decided in tomorrow's local elections in Britain. But the stakes are much higher across the Irish sea, where the future of government in Ulster is on trial.
And the UK’s entire relationship with Europe is also under threat, from Tory moves to tear up their own Brexit deal over trade with Northern Ireland.
Draft legislation to override the controversial Irish Protocol is being prepared, and could figure in next week’s Queen’s Speech.
That trade treaty, negotiated by Boris Johnson, which keeps Ulster in the EU single market with a new trade border with the rest of the UK, is backed by republican Sinn Fein but fiercely opposed by Unionists.
And in a sensational shift of tectonic plates, Sinn Fein is poised to win a historic victory, taking a majority of seats in the 90-member Stormont parliament.
The outcome could accelerate moves towards a border poll on a united Ireland. Michelle O’Neill, SF Stormont leader and likely first nationalist First Minister, predicts it could come “within this decade” - by 2032.
The knock-on effect of events across the water could be even more far-reaching. If Ulster goes, what is to keep Wales and Scotland in the increasingly Disunited Kingdom?
The Conservative and Unionist Party, to give it its full name, might end up presiding over the dissolution of the union.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein, the party once reviled by Margaret Thatcher and banned by her from broadcast media, is vigorously cleaning up its act to present a “modern” image to voters, focussing on the cost of living crisis, housing, and health.
Sinn Fein’s core purpose of Irish reunification hardly figures in campaigning, with leaders insisting: “That’s not what this election is about.”
The strategy appears to be working. The last pre-election poll put them eight points ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party, which effectively ruled the province until February, when its new leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson pulled the rug from under a power-sharing executive, and left Ulster without devolved government.
He acted to halt the drift of unionist votes to a new, more hard-line party, the breakaway Traditional Unionist Party, and to the older, resurgent Ulster Unionist Party.
But he failed to stem the tide, with loyalist South Down party officers defecting en masse to the TUP’s Harold McKee in the last days of the campaign.
Worse, that latest polling only has them tied for second with the cross-community Alliance Party.
By contrast, Sinn Fein is consolidating its image as a pragmatic choice, rejecting the military rhetoric of the Provisional IRA with which it was closely associated.
Recently, former IRA bomber (and current policing spokesman) Gerry Kelly called for an end to republicans wearing masks at commemorations for “Ireland’s patriot dead.” He further condemned petrol bomb attacks on the police following Easter parades as “wrong and disrespectful.”
And hundreds of posts on the SF website trashing NATO as “a Cold War relic that needs to be abandoned” and appearing to offer succour to Russia, have been wiped.
It would be unwise to over-interpret these signals as a softening of Sinn Fein’s primary objective, but they may be seen as straws in a wind of direction. Likewise, the party’s olive branch of partnership with the Unionists, unfortunately delivered in Milltown cemetery where the IRA’s dead are buried.
Emotions over a border poll run like the river Lagan under political discourse. While “the Shinners” seek to play down the issue, the DUP seeks to highlight it.
Michelle O’Neill told business leaders in Belfast that people were not waking up thinking about Irish unity, but thinking about the cost of living crisis.
“There won’t be any secret that I want to see unity in the country,” she declared, “ but I am focussed on the cost of living crisis.”
Two-thirds of homes in the province are heated by oil, which has doubled in price. There is no cap on either gas or oil, and half the population could fall into fuel poverty in the autumn. Sinn Fein promises to give every household a £230 bung to help them cope.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson accuses the republicans of telling the people of NI one story and its Irish-American backers a different one.
And he is trying the same political trick – only in reverse, by burying the burning issue of the Irish Sea border in a manifesto firmly fixed on the economy.
He insists: “I have a five point plan to build a better future for Northern Ireland within the union by fixing out NHS and investing £1 billion more in it, growing our economy and creating 20,000 new jobs in the next five years, helping working families by delivering 30 hours free childcare per week and tackling the cost of living crisis, keeping our schools world class and working to remove the Irish Sea border.”
For disenchanted ultra-Loyalists, “working to remove” hardly cuts the mustard. Accordingly, Sir Jeffrey is desperately working to shore up the DUP’s Unionist credibility by appearing at anti-Protocol rallies, even with one-time sworn political enemies, such as James Bryson, a hard-liner who last summer talked up the legitimacy of armed conflict.
Bryson’s policy is “the protocol must go, full stop.” while Sinn Fein’s O’Neill demands “the protocol is here to stay.” As the irresistible force and the immovable object move closer together, the UK government has just thrown the Loyalists some policy red meat.
Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns refuses to confirm reports that a Northern Ireland Bill to tear up the controversial Irish Protocol trade agreement is on the way.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit Opportunities Minister, let the cat out of the bag, telling MPs that the UK will “reform” the protocol if Brussels does not.
He hinted that measures will be included in the Queen’s Speech next week. “I oughtn’t to say any more with elections going on,” he said, “The wheels are in motion. We can do what we want, ultimately.”
His intervention, clearly aimed at bolstering the flagging fortunes of the DUP, may have come too late to affect the outcome of next week’s election. But it is a portent of the conflict that lies ahead, whoever wins.
Sir Jeffrey has refused to commit the DUP to a new power-sharing executive if Sinn Fein takes the First Minister’s role. Up to six months of bitter political wrangling could ensue.
The big issue of the border poll will not go away. At present, only about 30% support such a vote, and only the British government can call one.
And if backing for unity surges, it has even been suggested that Westminster could call a pre-emptive poll to scupper the republicans. Scarcely credible, but in Northern Ireland politics, the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
Sinn Fein’s article of faith is: Tiocfaidh ar la – roughly pronounced as “chokky ar lah” - Our Day Will Come. Voters in the province will decide today if it is any nearer.
