Smart unionists know that embracing equality works for all - Tom Kelly

To paraphrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “The unionists doth protest too much, methinks.”

Where’s the confident, assured and all embracing pluralist unionism - often promised but never delivered?

Unsurprisingly, the Assembly voted to continue the Windsor Framework. The outcome was probably the worst kept secret Santa of the year.

Naturally unionists protested the unfairness of a vote they could not veto.

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Clearly, the penny has still to drop with some that they are no longer cock of the walk at Stormont. They have really only two choices - make government in Northern Ireland work or walk away and watch it unravel from the wings.

It isn’t rocket science, though for a few getting the message seems to be like scaling Everest. Nor does it help when the rank and file of loyalism is rife with paranoia and delusion. Loyalist language is angry hyperbole laced with an exaggeration about non-existent threats and magnification of imaginary fears. Legitimate concerns get drowned out by loaded rhetoric.

Read more: Alex Kane: For all its anger over the Windsor Framework, the reality is unionism has no alternative to devolution

Often it’s hard to escape the notion that these windbag whiners are simply wind-up merchants. Like the Grand Old Duke of York they march to the top hill only to tumble back down.

The levels of absurdity in some quarters is staggering but it’s also wearisome, repetitive and truly, rigidly boring.

Too many times the courts have been the battleground for making political arguments. It’s questionable whether this is an appropriate avenue.

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Any vexatious or politically motivated attempts to involve judges in the mire of politics should be resisted.

In the recent court case concerning the Windsor Framework, Mr Justice McAlinden observed: “The thing that strikes me as repugnant to the separation of powers is asking the court at this stage to stop a legislative assembly conducting its business by holding a vote. It strikes me as fundamentally undemocratic.”

Nailed in 37 words.

Mainstream political unionism needs to ensure it doesn’t allow the tail to wag the dog. Leave veteran has-beens to the backbenches in the House of Lords and the political wannabes to the Nolan Show.

It’s amusing and at times nauseating, listening to DUP politicians invoking the spirt of the Good Friday Agreement - an agreement which they never backed, did not invest in and certainly never lived up to

Jim Allister is by far one of unionism’s more impressive and cerebral advocates but sabre rattling at Westminster will attract few friends to the cause of beleaguered True Blues. Many British politicians sigh at the mere mention of the north. They have bigger fish to fry than a few overly salted sardines which jumped into their own tins when they sided with English nationalists on Brexit.

Read more: What is the democratic consent mechanism? Stormont to vote on Irish Sea border arrangements

It’s amusing and at times nauseating, listening to DUP politicians invoking the spirt of the Good Friday Agreement - an agreement which they never backed, did not invest in and certainly never lived up to. Their ignorance of the GFA is clear: cross-community voting doesn’t apply to constitutional issues. There’s valid reasons why international agreements are the remit of governments and not devolved administrations. (Though the concept of parliamentary sovereignty seems to be a political inconvenience for some unionists).

The existence of a functioning Stormont provides much needed life support for the Union - even though political unionism does little to help or expand its support base.

It’s understandable some unionists are in a permanent state of queasiness when the monarch and the Sinn Féin First Minister are on speed dial.

Smart unionists know that embracing equality works for all - the stupid need disabused of the notion equality was/is in their gift.

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