Britain’s latest prime minister, Andy Burnham, raised hackles on his first trip to the North of Ireland when he declared a referendum on Irish unity to be “off the table.” Burnham may simply have intended to say that it wasn’t on the short-term agenda, since there is no sign as yet that a majority of people in the North would vote for a united Ireland. But his choice of words implied that it was for the British government to decide whether a referendum should happen, which angered nationalists.

Burnham’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Bryant, made another clumsy intervention when the unionist Orange Order tried to march down the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown. The Parades Commission, which regulates all public parades in the North, had denied permission for the march every year since the late 1990s. This time, however, a court found that the commission hadn’t followed the right procedures before rejecting the Orange Order’s application once again.

When the Orange Order filed another application to march down the Garvaghy Road on Sunday, September 29, the commission gave its approval, to the astonishment of nationalists. The Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, described the decision as “incomprehensible and wrong.” After not one but two court hearings on September 28, the march was due to go ahead, but residents of the Garvaghy Road assembled overnight to block the road.