IN October 2025, while addressing the UUP conference, then leader Mike Nesbitt stated, rather insightfully: “While unionists have always looked over their shoulders at Irish nationalists as the biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, Irish nationalists have been knocked off the gold medal spot by English nationalism.”

It is fair to say no-one at the conference would have expected that a short six months later, this very proposition would be sending unionist press offices into a panic of spin and deflection, following the decimation of Labour and Conservative seats across Britain in favour of Nigel Farage’s Reform party.

The same speech alluded to a very palpable change in atmosphere in the halls of Westminster, where members walk around wearing the flag of St George on their lapels, not the Union flag of a shared nation, and an alarming attack on the block grant awarded to Scotland which obviously set English nationalists’ teeth on edge.

Imagine then how attractive the £19bn for Northern Ireland would be to the same English nationalists wanting better public services, health and wealth for the people of England alone?

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