THE most prolific, perceptive and powerfully analytical writer on the north in the last 35 years, Brendan O'Leary, has just produced his magnum opus.
At three volumes, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, is a rigorous analysis of politics and society here since the sixteenth century.
It's an encyclopaedic work of unrivalled detail and scope. It will become the standard reference for anyone interested in the north.
It should be required reading for any British politician in the present circumstances, but certainly for any proconsul.
Unfortunately, given its size, you can't get your hands on it for less than £180.
O'Leary, formerly professor at the LSE, has now for some years been Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, but comes here annually as a visiting professor at Queen's.
His regular visits allow him to keep bang up-to-date with the current crisis facing this island. For all those reasons his new publication is timely.
Volume I is entitled Colonialism. O'Leary comprehensively demolishes the thin, wishy-washy revisionist gruel that is served up by history and politics departments at Queen's and UCD.
He demonstrates conclusively that Ireland was a colony and treated as such in a variety of different ways, easily identifiable to a political scientist, for centuries.
His contention is that decolonisation began in the south in 1937 and in the north from 1998-2007 when the descendants of planters ceased to rule the place on behalf of the imperial power and the descendants of natives began to exercise equal power. In the north decolonisation obviously has not been completed.
In the north we are in the final throes of what O'Leary (and other political scientists) calls 'internal colonialism', for the Stormont administration has collapsed and therefore the metropolitan core (London) exercises authoritative control.
The DUP is now temporarily performing the traditional role of planter descendants carrying out the will of the imperial capital against and despite the wishes and welfare of the majority of the population.
It will not end well for them. Ultimately it never does anywhere that happens.
Led by the stupidest and most politically inept and inadequate of the DUP's three leaders, the party, in O'Leary's words, has "studiously ignored Peter Robinson's plain post-retirement warnings".
These warnings have been reinforced by polls since 2018 showing increased numbers of unionists opposing a hard Brexit, or any Brexit, but also increasing numbers of both unionists and nationalists being more likely to vote for Irish unity in that event, even though they have not been offered any specifics about the form of that unity.
O'Leary concludes that, "'Waiting for the Referendum' will become the new canopy under which Northern Ireland's politics unfolds."
In that context he argues that after Brexit, "it would not be premature" for the Irish government to establish a ministry for Irish national reunification and reconciliation.
It should include a constitutional convention to address new configurations of political structure and minority rights.
After the 2021 census this requirement will become obvious to all, but better begin rather than react in three years' time so that any decision looks like an ill-considered knee-jerk.
Inevitably any such proposal will be met, as O'Leary admits, with predictable warnings of a loyalist backlash or forelash.
However, times have changed. In the 2020s there is no chance of the arrival of British troops to join, as O'Leary points out, in de facto alliance with loyalist militias as they did in 1920 and 1970. After all, apart from any other objection, that would be to defy the will of the majority.
Finally, to advocate an Irish constitutional convention to guarantee minority rights on the island in a new constitution is simply to offer the majority of the people in the north a way back into the EU.
They voted for that in 2016 and in greater numbers in 2019. Yet some say that's divisive. Whereas supporting Brexit against the majority isn't?
