The two halves of Ireland can’t be forced together

Last week, Edwin Poots was elected leader of the DUP. You will have read all about him. I have. You may not previously have known much about him. I didn’t. We should hesitate, I think, to respond to his elevation with a broad-brush sneering dismissal, or in personal terms. We know, of course, about Mr Poots’s creationist beliefs and most of us reject them, and I don’t like his views on homosexuality or abortion; but Poots has proved able to work pragmatically with republican fellow politicians.

In an important way, though, this isn’t about Poots, but what he represents: a unionist shift towards back-to-basics fundamentalism. His party is lurching towards a ‘core-vote’ strategy: consolidating its appeal to its fiercest supporters in the Protestant community while laying aside ambitions to win back voters peeling away from strident unionism. It is possible the DUP is beginning a slow, comforting, but ultimately fatal retreat towards the margin.