In this age of self-delusion, soft power, sideways aggression and hybrid war, I sometimes think we need a manual called ‘Defeat: How to Recognise it’. After all, you can’t avoid it if you don’t know what it looks like, and persist in viewing defeat as victory. The same people often view aggression as defensive, and the other way round. Can’t they grasp that, since the Nuremberg Tribunals outlawed aggressive war (except for the Top Nations, and even then, preferably under cover), war is pursued by other means than tanks, landing-craft, trenches etc? Though aerial bombing (preferably from a safe height against people without anti-aircraft defences) is interestingly common, in the western world things are done differently these days.

Nowadays, if you want to destroy another country, you overthrow its government by ‘people power’ mobs, backed by ‘civil society’ organisations’, whose origins are misty and undiscoverable, but which invariably vanish when their true objective is achieved. Or you can sponsor terrorism, and stone-throwing mobs behind which terrorists can hide (though it is best to do this not by openly backing the terrorists, but by demanding a ‘peace process’ in which those terrorists’ aims are achieved). It also helps if you can manage to make David look like Goliath. A huge country, or an alliance of huge countries (such as the Arab and Muslim world, in Israel, or the EU-NATO alliance, in Ukraine), can be made to look like the underdog provided their wars are carried out by romantic rebels - stone-throwing children, or Maidan demonstrators.

For more than 20 years now most people in this country have been deluding themselves about Northern Ireland. Some genuinely think that the 1998 Belfast Agreement (blasphemously called 'the Good Friday Agreement') was a defeat for the terrorists of the Provisional IRA. Not merely do they believe that the IRA has put its huge stockpiles of guns and explosives ‘beyond use’ (a belief based on not one single checkable or verifiable fact, but on the convenient opinion of one man who cannot be questioned about the basis of his opinion).

They think that the side whose political apologists are now in government in Northern Ireland is the side that lost. They think the side whose militants were released en masse from prison, long before their sentences for serious crimes were over, or who are shielded from ever going there, or promised ultra-short sentences if they do, by British government promises, despite crimes still alleged against them, is the side that lost.

They think the side whose cleverest and most ruthless killer, the late Martin McGuinness (an undoubted leader of the Provisional IRA) , has been welcomed to dine with the Queen at Windsor Castle in white tie and tails, is the side that lost.

They also think that the side whose soldiers and police officers are still being pursued by the authorities for alleged offences during the performance of their lawful duties is the winner. Even when the remaining unpunished IRA men, if caught, are let go - and would be almost instantly released were they prosecuted, under the terms of the 1998 agreement.

They think that the side which abolished its most effective anti-terror units won. They think that the side which withdrew its forces and dismantled its surveillance equipment won. They think that the side which can no longer legally fly its flag for much of the time, whose emblems have been removed from police badges and cannot appear on official documents such as driving licences, was the winner.

They think that the side which has declared that a portion of its national territory will be permanently surrendered on the say-so of a single referendum is the winner. You have to ask these people what they think would have happened if that side had lost.

Note that if this referendum is held and it votes *against* a surrender of territory, it can be held again, every seven years. But if it votes *for* transfer of territory, it is permanent and irreversible. And, unlike the EU referendum its result is mandatory. No roiom was left for wriggling, on this occasion. The UK government has signed, and the UK Parliament has ratified, a solemn treaty promising to bring forward the necessary legislation to achieve transfer of sovreignty, as soon as the vote goes in favour of it.

Some of them even think this result was not achieved through the active intervention of the USA, which has for two decades now been insistent that the British government makes and maintains peace with terrorists whom the USA (if its rhetoric is to be believed) regards with absolute horror, because terror itself is unforgiveable and there is a war on it which will last for the foreseeable future. Yet hardly a year passes when a senior figure from Sinn Fein is not welcomed to the White House for St Patrick's Day celebrations. One or other of those things cannot be true, can it?

Some of them even believe it when the deniable operations of the so-called ‘Real IRA’ and so-called ‘Continuity' or 'New' IRA (often coinciding with snags in negotiations over further concessions) are declared to be entirely beyond the control and responsibility of the Provisionals, and the work of ‘dissidents’ . These are ‘dissidents’ who, strangely, are not punished by the IRA for their dissent, as was once normal in that violent movement, much given to savage and ruthless internecine factional battles. On the contrary. Whenever one of these ‘dissident’ outrages takes place, it is excluded from the terms of the Agreement with the words ‘This must not be allowed to affect or derail the “peace process”’. What this actually means is that Irish Republicanism can, at will, break the truce it did not sign (No, it didn't. Sinn Fein did not sign the 1998 agreement). And it will not suffer for doing so, as long as it denies responsibility. Whereas if the UK government were to do so, it would be immediately severely condemned, not least by the US government and the EU. And it would be compelled to act sternly against any official, soldier or police officer who broke it. I suspect that, if anyone tracked the many and various breaches of the truce by deniable gangs, they would coincide with periods where the UK side were resisting demands for further concessions.

In the unlikely event of British forces taking armed action against the IRA, or, say, reinstating their surveillance equipment in South Armagh, I do not think any such expression would be used. There’d be an American envoy in Belfast and London in a week, and a grovelling British climbdown in ten days.

British victory? IRA defeat? Well, there’s one born every minute.

But what do these Panglosses of Peace think now that Sinn Fein, the political tail of the IRA, is now neck and neck with the main Unionist Party in the Stormont Assembly? We had been told until recently that Unionist dominance of the province was strong and lasting. Really? Not so long ago, political control of Belfast City, once a stronghold of Unionism, began to pass to Sinn Fein, which now has as many seats as the two major Unionist parties combined.

In the EU referendum, you might have thought conservative Unionist feeling(and thus anti-EU Federalist sentiment) would be stronger in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the UK. Yet a convincing majority (55.8% to 44.2%) voted to remain in the EU. This was an extraordinary result. I thought when I heard this that it meant the end of Northern Ireland within a generation. Despite airy claims that all is wonderful in the Land of Blairite Peace, I believe many Northern Irish Unionists (who thanks to their excellent grammar schools have easy access to the best mainland universities) are quietly leaving and not coming back. Others, I guess among the professional classes, are now becoming resigned to eventual rule by a Dublin Republic which (whatever it is ) is certainly not the sectarian Roman Catholic theocracy they once feared. British economic strength is not what it was, either. The losers will, as always, be the old, and the old-fashioned working class, the most militant and the most afraid of an all-Ireland state.

The latest Northern Ireland Assembly Elections show, in my view, the continuing long-term decline of Unionist parties which stand for a Union that has already been dissolved. Like captains without ships or jockeys without horses, they look increasingly pointless. A recent poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft (autumn 2019) showed a narrow but actual majority, in the six counties, for a United Ireland

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/poll-51-of-northern-ireland-voters-back-united-ireland-according-to-lord-ashcroft-survey-38488280.html

Partly, the change in recent election results is caused by a reduction in the number of seats. But on the old system the result would have been just as bad for the DUP, and just as good for Sinn Fein. It simply draws attention to the weakness of the DUP in general, now without its veto. That referendum is a matter of time. How long before UIster Unionism recognises that its remaining role is to negotiate some sort of special autonomous zone in a United Ireland, in which the Unionist minority (like the people of Hong Kong) are given a decent interval to accustom themselves to rule from a different capital? I suspect people in Dublin and Stormont are already thinking quietly about this.

I’m not in favour of this. Nor (as I will be accused of being by wild Republicans) am I a defender of the sectarian Orange statelet that was abolished by London many decades ago. I thought and think that Direct Rule was the most just and fair, and least sectarian, form of government for the six counties. Northern Ireland’s highest form of local government should have been County and City councils - and Stormont should have been turned into a museum. But that’s all gone now.

Weirdly, the issue which may bring all this to a head (NB this passage was originally written in July 2017) is the border with the Republic. I think this is a real problem, despite the merry dismissal of the issue by many on the anti-EU side. I cannot see how an open border with the Republic will not be a problem once we start serious immigration control on our own ports of entry. The Republic will never set up any kind of border controls, because it regards the border as an affront to Irish pride and unity. The cost of our doing so will be huge, and the dangers to those who man it will be great. Anyone who can reach the Republic of Ireland by air will have free access to UK territory. Any goods which can reach Ireland, likewise. I believe that in some parts of Northern Ireland there are already substantial migrant communities, some of whom have arrived from the South.

As far as I can see, the only practical solution to this will be to leave the internal border as it is, and start to enforce border controls on travellers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland, far easier as all crossings are by ship or plane. This also means the end of the supposed ‘Common Travel Area’ with the Republic, but in my recent experience this is now a myth anyway, as arrivals from London are compelled to produce passports at Dublin airport (as they should not be) and nobody does anything about it.

But controls between Belfast and London, and on the ferries, would be a big change. They would mean a de facto border between the British mainland and part of its sovereign territory. Unionists cannot support that. But a British government might need to implement it. What then? That would end any last illusions that Unionism had any serious support in London, or that the Ulster Unionists’ love for the Union is reciprocated by England.

This is what defeat looks like these days, not like SS-GB, but like having to listen, forever, to Anthony Blair.

***This is a revised text, updated on 17th May 2019, and again on November 25th 2019***