NOT for the first time, a political storm is slowly gathering across the water.

As Northern Ireland marks its centenary year, the marching season, cancelled in 2020 because of Covid, is due to resume in July with political tensions already worryingly high because of Brexit; most notably, over the highly contentious trade protocol, which has created an effective border for goods travelling from mainland UK.

Last week in London, Lord Frost, the UK Government’s minister for post-Brexit delivery, met Simon Coveney, Ireland’s Foreign Minister, to try to find a way through or around the current impasse. He has called on the EU to show “common sense” and this week will be in Brussels to meet Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission Vice-President, to see if a way forward can be found.

The ructions over the protocol have led to serious rifts within Northern Ireland’s Unionist family and could, theoretically, even pose a threat to the future of the Union.

In April, they led to the forced expulsion of Arlene Foster as leader of the Democratic Unionists, which was followed by resignations and walkouts and even allegations of paramilitary intimidation.

The acrimony continues to seep out.

On Friday, Peter Robinson, the ex-party leader and former First Minister, denounced the “savage slaying of a leader in the public eye,” which he said was “totally unnecessary and vindictive” and had caused serious damage to the DUP and its new leader, Edwin Poots.

For his part, Mr Poots hit back, saying Mr Robinson was “out of the loop” and did not know what had really happened.

Mr Robinson’s contention that damage is being done to the DUP is self-evident. Increasingly, the opinion polls do not make pleasant reading for members of the biggest Unionist party.

Last month, a snapshot for the Belfast Telegraph placed Sinn Fein on 25%, nine points clear of the DUP, which, together with the centrist Alliance Party, was on 16%; its lowest ever showing.

The Ulster Unionist Party rose to 14% and was ahead of the Nationalist SDLP, which dropped by one point to 12%. Meanwhile, the more hardline Unionist party of the Traditional Unionist Voice[TUV] nudged up one point to 11%.

Amid the divisions within the DUP, the UUP and Alliance claim they are seeing a rise in membership enquiries.

During the campaign to succeed Mrs Foster, Mr Poots used hard rhetoric but, since winning, he appears to have begun to soften his language and his lines.

On the protocol, while the UK Government appears to have rejected out of hand an offer from Brussels of a temporary solution, a Swiss-style deal, which the European Commission argues would eradicate 80% of border checks between Britain and Northern Ireland, the new DUP leader is presenting a softer line.

While he insisted the protocol was “not fixable” and, indeed, was damaging the peace process, and so had to go, last week he admitted the Swiss-style solution would “make things better” in the short term at least.

On Thursday, after a trip to Dublin for talks with Micheal Martin, the Taoiseach - described as “positive, frank and useful” - Mr Poots announced the DUP would end, what many regarded as a boycott of the North-South Ministerial Council, and its leaders would be at the next meeting on June 18.

This prompted the hardline TUV to accuse Mr Poots of a “shameless rollover,” declaring: “The reality is our links with the rest of the UK are being hacked away while it would appear the North-South arrangements can continue as normal. Unionism has lost patience with this duplicitous ambiguity.”

And, following a meeting of a party leaders’ forum in Belfast, the DUP chief appeared to accept Sinn Fein’s key demand of implementing an Irish Language Act. Mr Poots insisted he wanted to “expedite” the rollout of all outstanding aspects of the New Decade, New Approach deal, which re-established power-sharing in 2020.

These, he explained, included “cultural amendments” to the 1998 Northern Ireland Act; he did not actually use the phrase 'Irish Language Act'.

Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill, the Deputy FM, responded by saying action and not words was needed and stressed how there was now a “small window of opportunity” to introduce the language legislation in the Assembly before the summer recess.

Intriguingly, she declined to confirm whether her party had made a DUP commitment on Irish language a pre-requisite of it re-nominating a DPM when Mrs Foster resigns from her role later this month.

Given the polls, the mind of Mr Poots is being concentrated; he knows there are seven days for a full executive to be formed as failure to do so would collapse the assembly and spark fresh elections.

Ms O’Neill insisted she was committed to power-sharing but, nonetheless, revealed she had told the DUP leader in “no uncertain terms” what was required to get her party back around the table.

“The DUP,” she noted, “have some thinking to do over the course of the next number of days.”

The question is: with Unionism split, could the Republicans win any snap poll that would see it take the post of First Minister and possibly hasten the arrival of a border referendum on reunifying Ireland.

And yet, as in Scotland, strong arguments are made against putting constitutional matters ahead of public service delivery, particularly in the current context of the pandemic.

At the leaders’ forum, it was agreed to hold a special summit “within weeks” on dealing with NHS waiting lists, which have rocketed in recent years.

Some 335,000 people are now waiting for a first consultant-led appointment; more than half – 189,753 – have been waiting longer than a year. The numbers mean Northern Ireland has the worst waiting times of any part of the UK.

The increase during the three-year suspension of Stormont was 200,000; a shocking reminder of how the public suffers when politicians fail.