As all strands of political unionism and loyalist paramilitarism assembled in an east Belfast Orange Hall to sign a new PUL covenant yesterday, it is worth reminding ourselves of the pertinent facts.

The political leadership of unionism, from the DUP First Minister, Peter Robinson, to the UDA and UVF-aligned political representatives and the anti-Agreement TUV leader, Jim Allister, have united as one to endorse a programme of ‘graduated’ action intended on raising communal tensions and putting the shared political institutions at risk because a UVF-aligned loyalist band (with Combat 18 sympathisers) and Orangemen can not march through a Catholic area in Belfast’s most sensitive sectarian interface twice in one day.

As a statement of where Unionism stands in 2014, it requires no elaboration.

Meanwhile, the trickledown from the supremacist agenda is visible on the pyres that will today be adorned with more of the sickeningly sectarian and racist banners and items that have formed an integral part of the 11th/12th celebrations.

On this note, yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph led with the reappearance of a statue to the Virgin Mary on the Lanark Way bonfire in north Belfast, the third year a religious statue has been placed on this bonfire (it’s traditional!) It was stolen from a shrine dedicated to a victim of suicide (lest we forget, loyalists in north Belfast have form in mocking Catholic victims of suicide from bonfires.)

In Limavady, a Kill All Taigs (KAT) banner was helpfully placed on a bonfire in case the message from the appearance of election posters was not clear enough. And, from east Belfast to Armagh, the Papal flag proudly flutters alongside the Irish Tricolour to further drive home to the assembled the true face of the enemy.

Newtownabbey loyalists included a swastika on a banner proclaiming ‘Culture not Cash,’ an inconvenient nod to the fusion of racism and sectarianism further exposed by the proliferation of yellow posters to the hated Chinese woman, Anna Lo, peppering bonfires in a break from a not so proud tradition in which posters of the traditional Other alone took pride of place on the bonfires.

Unionism’s graduated response is but the latest effort to return Ulster to a distant past, where the beat of the Orange Drum kept order in a society affording a superior place to Britishness in all its local manifestations- a Britishness rejected by the British of Britain, as illustrated by Prime Minister Cameron’s carefully delivered uppercut to Gregory Campbell in the House of Commons this week.

Over on EamonMallie.com, Colm Dore’s piece on Unionism and Modernity is worth reading: