SLOWLY but surely, it looks like we are moving towards a period when unionism will be represented by a singular political message, if not yet one party voice.

It won’t be a new departure.

From partition until 1968, unionism corralled around the one governing party, save for a small number of independent unionists.

It wasn’t until Terence O’Neill dared to suggest introducing some reforms that the monolith began to fragment.

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Four different unionist parties were elected to the 1973 Assembly alongside an independent.

The internal convulsions brought on by having to process unionism’s greatest compromise, following the Good Friday Agreement, led to no fewer than five parties gaining election to the Assembly in 1998, with the UDA-aligned Ulster Democratic Party also contesting.

At that time, Alliance were also very much in the space of a liberal unionist party, a position demography and societal changes have meant is in their rear view mirror today.

The DUP’s ascent at the start of this century was initially boosted by their success in presenting themselves as a unifying voice for a more strident unionism amidst a fractured post-Agreement world.

Peter Robinson skilfully navigated the party into the position of dominance, injecting confidence into the grassroots in the process.

That continued until coming to an abrupt end with Brexit, RHI and the transformed electoral realities since 2017.

© The Irish News