Alex Kane set the cat among the unionist pigeons a couple of weeks ago with his piece on March 18.

As a reminder to people, he wrote that “the past is always in front of us” – you can’t just paint over it and forget it. True.

However, when people talk about the past, it’s assumed they’re referring to the Troubles.

It appears Alex was referring to the great injustice done to this place in the past, which he correctly identified as partition.

Brian Feeney: Partition is the problem and unity is the only solution

Alex Kane: History means there will always be a ‘UK dimension’ in Ireland

He correctly pointed out that partition is “the primary cause of the conflict” and while that remains unresolved, there will be no solution.

Unfortunately, Alex didn’t follow the logic of his own argument, namely that undoing partition, reuniting the country, is the solution.

Trying to skirt round a failure to follow through to the logical conclusion means having to come up with the assertion that reunification is not inevitable.

Yet any other outcome escapes Alex, not only because he can’t think of a plausible one, but for the simple reason that there isn’t one.

You may have read a lengthy interview at the weekend with the BBC’s Clive Myrie, veteran journalist and Mastermind host. He reminisced about his visits to Belfast in the 1980s as a reporter.

On arrival he immediately identified what was happening.

“It was a classic example of the retreat of a colonial power from a certain part of the world, and I saw it in those terms… particularly in relation to other conflicts around the world that were happening at the same time.”

Partition was part of that retreat: it failed. They say when Douglas Hurd was being taken on a tour after his arrival here as proconsul in 1984, he saw graffiti on a wall which said “Brits Out”. Hurd said: “Yes, but how?”

Ten years later, Patrick Mayhew told the German magazine Der Spiegel that Britain would gladly leave the north “mit handkuß” – kiss it goodbye.

Partition has failed, and it follows therefore that all attempts to sustain it must fail.

The present iteration at Stormont is demonstrating that truth conclusively on a daily basis.

That leaves us in a bind, for while the British don’t know how to leave, the present Irish government doesn’t want them to go.

Micheál Martin is on a bit of solo run on that topic as well as on several others, including Irish neutrality.

Martin won’t mention Irish unity, let alone the way to achieve it.

People have advanced various reasons for his stance: cynicism, hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty. The simplest of all may be the truth: selfish political advantage.

Martin knows that reunification is the end of Fianna Fáil, for Sinn Féin will devour his party once northern votes are added to its total.

In that respect, the position of Martin and of unionist politicians is symmetrical. They both hope and believe the self-evident fallacy that the future must be the same as the past.

So Martin comes up with all sorts of excuses to avoid change: “Now is not the time”, though no-one says it is. “There has to be reconciliation first” – an impossible, undefined pre-condition he falsely added to the Good Friday Agreement.

In any of the other conflicts in the world Clive Myrie referred to, what is done first is create political mechanisms to resolve the conflict.

Is it not obvious, as Leo Varadkar has said, that there would have been no Good Friday Agreement if people had to wait for ‘reconciliation’?

As Heaney said in 1997 about reconciliation: “That word has become a policy word – official and public.”

In concrete terms it is therefore both useful and meaningless. How would you know if it had been achieved?

Worse is that Martin, by inventing ‘reconciliation’ as a pre-condition, has handed hard-line unionists an obvious incentive to be as obstructive and disruptive as possible.

The result is that we’re stuck until two things happen: Fianna Fáil gets shot of Martin, with any luck by 2027, and the current turmoil in British politics is resolved, by 2029 – maybe.

Nevertheless, we’re in the end game, with both Martin and unionist leaders struggling to postpone the evil day that is a topic of conversation across the island.

The solution beckons with the referendum on reunification, offering the British the ready-made exit they search for.

The colonial power always leaves, you know. The Portuguese left Angola in 1975 after being there since the 15th century.

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