Ohh Jim, Jim, Jim Jim Jim, this is a fascinating new constitutional principle you’ve discovered, if a politician believes a law or legal framework is wrong and campaigns against it, they have no respect for the rule of law. Does that principle apply retrospectively to you? You spent years opposing the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite it being given legal effect by the sovereign UK Parliament, the parliment you tell us you adore, You didn’t simply say, “That’s the law, therefore I must respect it.” You challenged its legality and constitutionality all the way to the UK Supreme Court. When the Parades Commission, exercising powers given to it by law, made determinations you disagreed with, you didn’t tell unionists to quietly accept them either. In 2013 you called one determination a “farcical Parades Commission decision”, demanded that the Commission be abolished, and argued that the law should instead presume in favour of traditional Orange routes. And perhaps we should go further back. In 1985 you attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front, established amid opposition to police rerouting of loyalist parades. The organisation had UDA involvement, including senior UDA figure John McMichael on its coordinating committee. Then in 1986 you helped organise the rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of Ulster Resistance. You marched at the head of hundreds of loyalists, contemporary accounts describe many wearing paramilitary, style uniforms and some wearing masks, before pledging your “personal support” for Ulster Resistance. You even complained that the RUC had tried to prevent the procession reaching the meeting and celebrated the colour party getting into town another way. So let’s dispense with the rewriting of history. When Jim Allister believed laws, institutions or government arrangements were wrong, he opposed them, protested against them, challenged them in court and campaigned to have them changed or abolished. And he was entitled to do so. Because the rule of law does not require citizens or politicians to believe every law is just. There is a fundamental difference between saying “this law is wrong and I will oppose it” and saying “the law does not apply to me.” If Michelle O’Neill is alleged to have committed an offence, investigate it and let the legal process determine that. But spare everyone the suggestion that simply opposing a law demonstrates contempt for the rule of law. Because by that newly invented standard, Jim, your own political history, from opposition to parade restrictions and the Anglo-Irish Agreement through Ulster Resistance, the Protocol and beyond, would make for some remarkably uncomfortable reading. Opposing laws and institutions you disagreed with was called political principle when you did it. It cannot suddenly become constitutional anarchy when Michelle O’Neill does it.

Sam, this rather conveniently obscures who is actually threatening to topple Stormont. The TUV’s position could hardly be clearer: “No parade, no Stormont.” Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill was challenged by people shouting for Stormont to be brought down and argued for preserving the institutions and building on peace and progress. So perhaps the “underlying disease” deserves a little more examination. For decades NI operated on the basis that nationalism was expected to accommodate, compromise and know its place. Equality changed that. Nationalists now have exactly the same democratic entitlement to have their identity, concerns and rights taken seriously as unionists do. Yet look at what happens when one nationalist community objects to one exceptionally contentious parade route, suddenly we’re hearing threats about Stormont, power-sharing and the entire political settlement. Indeed, current reporting identifies a strand of unionism spanning the TUV and elements of the DUP which is sceptical of power-sharing and has helped reignite Drumcree almost three decades later. That is surely worth confronting. If your commitment to power-sharing survives only for as long as the other community gives you what you want, that’s not much of a commitment to power-sharing. Stormont’s fundamental principle is not that nationalism must continually give another inch to prove it is reasonable. It’s that neither tradition gets to dominate the other. Perhaps the problem isn’t that everyone has “lost their faith” in Stormont. Perhaps part of the problem is that some people still haven’t reconciled themselves to what genuine equality and power-sharing actually mean.