Choosing between unions? Unionist opinion and the challenge of brexit

Support for Brexit in Northern Ireland has been substantially associated with the unionist community, and has evolved against a backdrop of changing patterns of relationships between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, and between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But the shape taken by the Brexit project is such that it also offers an existential threat to the Union. Is the phenomenon of the unionist Brexiteer simply an unexpected conjunctural development, or might it be explained by reference to distinctive features of unionist ideology? This article provides an initial overview of the comparative and historical context in which unionism responded to major political restructuring in the last century. It asks if the very quest to uphold the Union in contentious times leads to strategies that appear to have the opposite effect. It suggests that the phenomenon of the Brexit-supporting unionist may derive from a distinctive strand of Ulster unionist ideology, one which prioritises the symbolic interests of the 'imagined community' in Northern Ireland.