A case could be made that the best medicine for what ails England would be an English departure from the Union, argues Writer at Large Neil Mackay

Sometimes it’s frightening to stare too long at your own reflection. When I was a kid aged about 10, my pals and I played a game during sleepovers called "Mirror Monster". We’d wait until it was late and all the adults were asleep, then we’d turn the lights really low, get a mirror and gaze into it. After a while, in the near darkness, your image starts to move and change as your eyes struggle to focus. Eventually, it looks like your face is seething and distorted. It’s you, but it’s not you: it’s a deformed monster version of you staring back from the crepuscular gloom of the mirror.

Mike Nesbitt, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, seems to have being playing his own game of Mirror Monster lately. He’s been studying the shape of English nationalism. If Ulster Unionism has a twin, it’s found in the nationalism of England. Both are hung-up on the monarchy and the military, both fetishise the past – particularly Empire and the two world wars – both are insular and inward-gazing. They share similar symbols, like the crown, for instance.

Ulster unionism and English nationalism are effectively mirror images of each other. But Nesbitt doesn’t like what he sees any more. English nationalism is, he now believes, an existential threat to Ulster’s unionists. Nesbitt told his party’s conference at the weekend: “Unionists have always looked over their shoulder at Irish nationalists as the biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the Union.”

But now, Nesbitt added: “Irish........

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