OUR proud United Kingdom is creaking at the edges.
Calls for Scottish independence and a seemingly intractable problem in Northern Ireland are testing our 300-year-old union.
I have said it once before, but do not hesitate to say it again.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Not literally, perhaps, but a break-up of the union would have catastrophic consequences.
I am an optimist at heart and the demise of Nicola Sturgeon has brought relief, at least in the short term.
After 11 years of Scottish nationalism, high taxes, plummeting life expectancy, failing health services, record drug deaths, lowered educational results, corruption enquiries and the gender recognition fiasco, the appetite for independence has waned, with a new poll showing Scots would vote ‘no’ by 56 to 44 per cent.
Meanwhile, over the water, the Northern Ireland Protocol continues to aggravate both sides, as the fourth Prime Minister in four years is discovering.
As a purist, I and many of my parliamentary colleagues, want to conclude what the EU referendum was all about, namely the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.
However, the EU is playing hardball as negotiations continue, unwilling as they are to ease future EU tax and standards regulations, or the role of the European Court of Justice in settling disputes there.
We simply cannot have another entity imposing rules on our country and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is in full agreement.
The DUP maintains that the Protocol undermines the historic Good Friday Agreement (GFA), as NI is treated differently to the rest of the UK, violating the GFA’s ‘principle of consent’.
The impasse sees the Stormont Assembly unable to function and an integral part of our country remaining vulnerable.