In 1921 Edward Carson made a speech in the House of Lords that has in recent weeks been justly recalled. Carson, typically, spoke in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty that established the Irish Free State but his words have gained fresh piquancy in these Brexit times. He concluded, in a passage often quoted now, that his long career as the leader and embodiment of Ulster Unionism had been, in large part, a failure. “What a fool I was,” he said, “I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power.”

Circumstances change but some things remain strikingly constant. “What has Ulster done?” Carson asked before answering his own question: