The SDLP wasted no time after last week’s English local government elections. Within hours of the final results, it released an image online of Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, under the words “A dark direction”.

A quote below it from SDLP leader Claire Hanna read: “Every day, we are confronted with reasons to break from the UK’s narrow, isolationist path and instead build a diverse, just and confident Ireland that everyone can call home.”

There is no doubt Hanna is personally appalled by the politics Farage represents.

But many nationalists also see reasons for hope in Reform’s electoral breakthrough. They believe their cause can only benefit if British politics repels centrist voters in Northern Ireland. A Reform-led government in Westminster might slash Stormont’s funding, leave the European Convention on Human Rights or call a snap Border poll to finally “get Brexit done”.

These scenarios have been the subject of widespread musing since last year, when Reform’s polling took off in advance of a general election. That speculation might now be seen as prophetic, but it also reveals nationalism’s growing tendency to seek hope from external events. While that has always been true to a degree, Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum raised such hopes to unprecedented levels. But Scottish nationalism has imploded and Brexit is........

© The Irish Times