The DUP’s support for Brexit might have partly been predicated on a longing for Unionist hegemony but this was always wishful thinking. Northern Ireland has changed. The state’s future will likely be decided by the growing numbers of middle-class Protestants increasingly attracted by the avowedly non-sectarian politics practised by Alliance and the Greens.
Far from copper-fastening Northern Ireland's place in the union, Brexit was always going to have the opposite effect. But all the talk of an ‘economic united Ireland’ and ‘border polls’ has further unsettled a deeply divided society.
Once again, Westminster appears uninterested. The secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, waited until Thursday – almost a week into the unrest – before “flying to Belfast”.
The current spasm of violence should not be overplayed. This is not a return to the Troubles. Previous outbreaks of Loyalist unrest in 2005 and 2010 burned brightly then faded away, albeit often deepening the alienation in working-class Protestant communities.
The DUP has much to answer for. Having made a border of any kind ‘a blood red line’, Arlene Foster’s party played into Loyalist fears. Now the first minister is left pleading for restraint with no political strategy for how to pull Northern Ireland out of the mire that her party did so much to propel it into.
Loyalists have much to be angry about. Poor Protestant boys have the lowest levels of educational attainment in Northern Ireland. There is little sign of a ‘peace dividend’.
Once the violence dies down, and the media attention shifts, the good people that I met at the interface in Derry all those years ago will still be there. Until their lives improve, peace in Northern Ireland will always be the same: fragile, partial and easily manipulated by cynical political forces.
This piece originally appeared in the Sunday National.