The great Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill, once said: “Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.”

That is as good a phrase as any to sum up the general election’s results last week.

Yes, sure we have a new government elected – with a stonking majority, only slightly behind that of the Blair government of 1997 – but that said government has been elected with only 34 per cent of the popular vote.

So, in effect, only one third of Britons voted for the new Labour government.

Such are the vagaries of the first past the post system which operates in the general election.

We will wait and see how different the Labour Centrist government is to the Conservative Centrist government.

And what about Northern Ireland?

There has been much excitement about the dominance of Sinn Féin, and it is true that the Nationalist community – especially in seats such as our own in Fermanagh and South Tyrone – are in the main voting for a party which still justifies IRA violence, and whose candidate here refused to condemn the Enniskillen bomb.

Not very pleasant for those of us who live here, and believe there was always an alternative to violence, but our Nationalist neighbours in this constituency choose to vote for Sinn Féin, and we will have to acknowledge that and live with it.

The leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald, told us after the European elections in the Republic that Sinn Féin was “nailed on” for gains in Northern Ireland.

They actually came back with the same number of seats, but you wouldn’t have thought it.

I didn’t hear Mary Lou’s bold assertion put back at her by any journalist – it was as if she hadn’t said it.

In reality, those who want to destroy the UK were able to muster around 40 per cent of the vote, and that is the same figure as 1998 – I don’t hear that reflected upon by many in the mainstream media, who are sadly entirely carried away with the Sinn Féin-fed narrative.

There is absolutely no basis for their clarion cry for a Border poll, but they will take every opportunity to parrot their made-up narrative, and regrettably they won’t be challenged by our media as they are ignorant of the real story, or just accept the Sinn Féin line, ad nauseum.

As for Unionism, they achieved a vote of 43 per cent, whilst the Alliance party in this election fell slightly, from 16.8 per cent in the 2019 Westminster election to 15.6 per cent in last week’s poll.

That doesn’t take away from the significant challenges to the DUP.

In 2019, their vote share was 30.6 per cent, and they held eight seats. This time round, their vote share was 21.4 per cent, and they are only going back with five seats.

Perhaps that is understandable, given some of the very public pressures the party and individuals within it have faced recently.

But that is not the story of Unionism, which is still, despite all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, strong – just look at North Down for evidence of that.

The challenge is that despite coming back with the same number of seats, they are held by different brands of Unionism. 

What then to do? Well, I hope that those within the different strands of Unionism – not necessarily at leadership level (as sometimes that can be challenging for a range of reasons) will eventually heed the desire for closer working held by so many across the Province, and indeed, in mainland UK.

Look at how Scotland has pushed back the SNP, who dropped from 48 seats in the last general election to now just holding nine.

Unionism in Northern Ireland should be greatly encouraged by the Scottish story, as at one time the SNP were masters over all they surveyed.

And what of this great constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, the place we are privileged to call home? Well, that is more than the new MP can say, for a start!

We are used to having an absentee MP, regrettably, but now we have one who doesn’t even live anywhere near the constituency.

If we were hoping for a local champion with at least an affinity with the area they represent, we are going to be badly disappointed.

The new Sinn Féin MP is not from the constituency, does not live in the constituency, and wouldn’t be able to point out the difference between Knockmanoul and Aghadrumsee.

She is in the best traditions of the phrase “a blow-in”, parachuted in by Sinn Féin to take over from Michelle Gildernew.

Before the election, it appeared Sinn Féin kept her away from the media after her appearance on BBC Good Morning Ulster where, as a good Sinn Féin candidate, it seemed she stuck to her given lines about the Enniskillen bomb.

She had just resigned as the head of the Royal College of Nurses (RCN), but couldn’t condemn the murder of two nurses by the IRA, as that would not be in keeping with the “no alternative” line she appeared to have had been given and instructed to repeat.

It’s all a far cry from when Pat Cullen was head of the RCN and had no difficulty pouring praise on the King when he had written to the RCN to offer support.

That press release mysteriously disappeared from the RCN website, one presumes to take away the embarrassment for the Republican unable to take the Oath of Allegiance to the King she had so publicly congratulated.

So, we have yet another absentee MP who fails to stand up for this most westerly past of the United Kingdom, in the place she was elected to.

After she was elected, Pat Cullen told a reporter that we should not be concerned, because when she was the head of the RCN, those of importance came to her and that is what will happen again.

Makes you wonder why all those MPs go to represent their constituents, when they could just sit at home and wait for everyone to come to them!

It is nonsense of the highest grade, of course, and totally delusional, but that is what our Nationalist neighbours voted for, so that is what we have got – not so much a local champion in London, but a Sinn Féin stooge in Belfast.

As the French would say, “Plus ça Change”. The more things change, the more they stay the same.