‘People won’t vote for unity, because of the price’

Nigel Daly works the land near the Fermanagh border, a few miles from where he was born. His outlook has been shaped by years away from home – both in London and in the far south-west of Ireland, where he raised a family among friends and where religion or identity didn’t matter. But the lure of his “homeplace” was too much.

This is a thoughtful, outward-looking man who belies the bowler-hatted stereotype that damages Unionism so much. He’s knitted himself back into a community where prosaic fears – the cost of living, bad roads, poor internet – have supplanted the existential ones that haunted his community within living memory – when women stood guard with shotguns as their men worked the “killing fields” and far too often died in them for the crime of staying put.

He returned to start a dairy farm in a place on nodding terms with peace, if not yet fully in love with it. He understands why so few farmers were prepared to speak to me on the record. The “friction” and suspicion of the Troubles here that saw so many of their number cut down – including those in the security forces – still lingers. He wants to move on: “forgive but don’t forget”. Is he optimistic for Unionism now?

“To a certain degree, if there’s an argument about a border poll, it has to be laid out properly, not like Brexit. Let’s have everything on the table, including the very high cost of living down south. I’m optimistic because a lot of people are holding their cards close to their chests and won’t vote for unity, because of the price.”