BELGRADE, THURSDAY

A FRESH POLL which shows Ulster Unionists would demand permanent power-sharing in any future United Ireland, has been met with a reassurance that there has been a robust Unionist voice in the Irish Parliament for decades.

“Fine Gael has been in office permanently since 2011,” says Dr Rupert Fusilier of the Majesty Institute, a not for profit organisation that commemorates the firing squads who shot the leaders of the 1916 Rising. Based in Dublin’s Stephen’s Green, M.I. as it is known, insists it is there principally to draw attention to what it calls “a long-ignored group without which there would be no independent Irish state”, and also to celebrate Ireland’s hidden Britishness. “We put flowers on the graves of Auxiliaries and Black and Tans, and contribute what we can raise to the families of informers and spies, who have been deserted by London for a century now; and occasionally we even re-run old episodes of Blue Peter – the ones with Val and John Noakes,” insists Fusilier, whose recent book Fenian Bastards Are Responsible For Everything Bad In Ireland was published by SIS Publishing.

“We were never so proud as when people began to refer to Fine Gael Taoiseach John Bruton as ‘John Unionist’ in the 1990s. He was a great fan of our patron saint, John Redmond, you know, a man who, if only the Ulster Unionists of his day recognized it, was happy to keep us in the Union, which is real the pity of what happened. Home Rule was not independence, it wasn’t even repeal of the Union. Just devolution. Like Stormont without the huge salaries. We felt so abandoned when Ulster Unionists jumped ship in 1922. For too long, Irish unionism has had to hide in plain sight, relying for life support on the BBC and various comics like Victor and Warlord and the writings of Conor Cruise O’Brien, and episodes of The Crown, and, of course, RTE, but I can assure our loyal brothers and sisters in Ulster, Irish unionism is still alive and well all across the island, and a United Ireland would give it a huge shot in the arm. And who knows what might happen then?”