How long do you think Leo Varadkar will live? I don't mean that he is looking unwell these days. It is just that he said last week there will be a united Ireland in his lifetime and I was wondering how many years he thinks he has left.
The SDLP says he must live for another seven years to see unity, but Sinn Féin appears to believe he only has to hang on for about another fortnight.
If nationalists are so confident of an impending united Ireland, what are they doing to achieve it? Oddly, apart from predicting it, they are doing very little. Indeed their premature triumphalism means they are effectively working against it.
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You see, it all depends on what you mean by a united Ireland. Traditionally it meant Wolfe Tone's ideal of uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter in the common name of Irish people. (It's called republicanism.)
However, nationalists' constant criticisms of Protestant and Dissenter unionists suggests that modern nationalism has no coherent ideology beyond anti-unionism. They fail to see the inherent contradiction between demonising unionists, particularly over Brexit, and promising how well they will be treated in a united Ireland.
A new Ireland will require unity with unionists, but nationalists now see unity as meaning a majority of just one vote in a border poll. (The northern state was built on a 66-34 majority and look how it turned out.)
Nationalists (led by SF) had the chance to resurrect Tone's spirit of 1798 in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA). Instead they opted for sectarian division by handing the Protestants and Dissenters to the DUP and representing only the Catholics. (They call that republicanism.)
They say their new Ireland will cater for unionism's Britishness. However, if unionists want to remain outside the EU, how exactly will they be catered for? Special trading arrangements for Sandy Row and the Shankill?
If a united Ireland is going to have an annual 'Be Nice to Unionists Day', why not launch it now? Or is there a date fixed for the niceness to start? Nationalists could begin by trying to understand unionism.
Leo Varadkar's family came here in the 1960s. He rightly claims to be Irish. Unionists have been here since the 1600s, but Leo says they are British. They are no more British than he is Indian. If Scottish unionists are Scottish, why are Irish unionists British?
A united Ireland means the unity of all Irish people (including Irish unionists) particularly on social and economic issues. That coming together happened a few times in Irish history: the 1798 rebellion; the 1916 Proclamation; Belfast's outdoor relief strike in 1932; the Republican Congress of 1934 and the civil rights movement from 1967. All were killed by sectarianism.
For example, the hopes and dreams of 1967 were destroyed by the sectarianism of Paisley and then the Provisional IRA.
Claiming to be rebels, they both wrecked our society through advocating and practising sectarian violence. Now they are wrecking it again, this time as members of the establishment.
Nationalism today is firmly in that narrow tradition of O'Connell and Redmond. As Micheál Martin corrodes Irish neutrality, watch as 'Irish' regiments in an EU army fight for America against Russia and China.
Unionism, of course, is still stuck in the rut of fighting for a long disappeared British Empire. So nationalists and unionists will die together abroad for the US. They would be better learning to live together at home.
Nationalists need to recognise that unity is not merely a constitutional arrangement. It is a union of minds among ordinary people on issues such as education, welfare and health.
Partition was about flags. Nationalists just want to re-arrange those flags. They fail to recognise that the real border here is not on the ground – it is in the minds of our people, created by a century of partition.
Unless nationalism recognises and addresses this, Leo Varadkar will have to live forever.
