Why is Corbyn cosying up to Northern Ireland’s unionists?

How serious are Jeremy Corbyn and the Corbynites about winning power? Deadly serious, if the remarkable tactical flexibility he displayed on his first official visit to Belfast as leader of the Labour Party is anything to go by. Corbyn took care to genuflect not just to nationalist idols such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and John Hume, but also to three Unionist big beasts – Arlene Foster, Ian Paisley Sr and David Trimble.

The Labour leader has not suddenly become a “revisionist” in the affairs of Northern Ireland, which to this day remains one of his longest-lasting and deepest ideological commitments. He has engaged in no “agonising reappraisal “ of his view of the historical roots of conflict on the island of Ireland – 800 years of British oppression and all that. Corbyn still talked about the Troubles being a ‘plague of violence’ – as if this was a natural phenomenon and not the choice of human agents.