Dear Andy Burnham,

How dare you come over here and tell us the truth? You arrived last week and said that a border poll was not on the table.

Everyone here knows a poll is not coming any time soon, but nationalists predict its arrival (always a few years in the future) to win votes and unionists use the same timeframe as a threat to their electorate.

The British sold the IRA a pup in the Good Friday Agreement by offering a border poll when London thinks it is “likely” to achieve a nationalist majority.

Unionists like me are appalled that some want to re-open the Drumcree dispute

Pat McArt: Where did Derry’s Prods all go?

For 28 years Sinn Féin has been promising that the pup is about to grow into a greyhound and race towards Irish unity.

Like other British prime ministers, you might have gone along with that myth.

What you were effectively saying, but what nationalists do not realise, is that it can never be in Britain’s security or economic interests to allow a united Ireland within a federal-style European Union - especially one controlled by France and Germany.

Britain is unlikely to re-join the EU, so a united Ireland outside the EU would be less of a threat to Britain. It would also be........

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