English nationalism is the biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the union, according to the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.<\/p>\n
Mike Nesbitt was speaking at his party’s annual conference.<\/p>\n
He did not mention Reform UK by name, but polls suggest that support for Nigel Farage’s party is high.<\/p>\n
Mr Nesbitt said English nationalists had overtaken Irish nationalism as the principal threat to the continuation of the political status quo in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
“Unionists have always looked over their shoulder at Irish nationalists as the biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the inion.<\/p>\n
“Irish nationalists have been knocked off the gold medal spot on the rostrum by English nationalism,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said questions were being asked by some at Westminster about central funding for devolved regions like Scotland.<\/p>\n
He said the annual \u00a319 billion subvention to Northern Ireland could come under pressure from English MPs who wanted the money spent closer to home.<\/p>\n
“That’s the real danger of supporting the sort of right-wing parties other unionists currently find so appealing,” Mr Nesbitt said.<\/p>\n
He said the DUP were doing most to put the constitutional question on the agenda with its “full-throated support for Brexit”.<\/p>\n
Mr Nesbitt also talked about the implications of unity, where unionist representatives could have a major say in the politics of a new Ireland.<\/p>\n
He said unionist TDs could end up being a controlling block in Leinster House.<\/p>\n
“Why would a proud Irish person want me, or Gavin Robinson ( DUP leader) or Jim Allister (TUV leader) choosing their next Taoiseach?” he said.<\/p>\n
He added he did not believe people would vote to leave the UK economy for the Irish one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"English nationalism is the biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the union, according to the leader of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-74227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}