Tag Archives: DUP
Opportunity knocks
We don’t yet know how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland exactly, but the referendum result certainly revived the nationalist trope that Irish unity is ‘inevitable’.
The Republic’s national parliament recently published plans for a forum “to achieve the peaceful reunification of Ireland”, Sinn Fein blithely assure unionists that the “British identity” will be protected in a thirty-two county state and newspaper columnists rush to tell readers that the fourth green field will soon “bloom again”. One particularly excitable author, Kevin Meagher, a former special adviser to Shaun Woodward, (remind me again why unionists didn’t trust that former secretary of state), even called his book “A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable”.
In response, unionists have challenged nationalism’s “self-regarding, single certainty” in a series of astute articles.
Attrition
The news that the talks at Stormont, aimed at kick-starting the Northern Ireland Executive, are to be put on hold until after the summer break does not really come as any surprise.
Use a position of power wisely, with caution.
The election results of the 8th June came as shock to many.
The Governing party, the Conservative & Unionist (the Unionist being something people seem to forget) Party was short of a majority, having at the outset expected a fantastic election: which would give them a huge majority; put Corbyn’s (Old) Labour ‘out-of-business’; and strengthen the United Kingdom negotiation position ahead of Brexit.
Didn’t quite work out that way. The most unexpected outcome, amongst all the ramifications and recriminations, has been the increased attention towards Northern Ireland and principally the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The DUP prioritised The Union. Unionists do that.
The whole point of the DUP is to safeguard Northern Ireland’s position within the UK. As unionists, they believe in the nation state and see the UK as the rock on which our prosperity, security and identity is built.
It is unsurprising that these views have lead them into a strongly pro-Brexit stance, though even then there is a pragmatism to their politics that is sometimes missed. The government would have known what the DUP’s red lines were before the latest round of talks hit the buffers.
The Irish government denies the charge that it asked that Monday’s Brexit paper be kept from the DUP, but the reality is that the DUP had received only an emollient verbal briefing and had been asking for days to see a paper. It was passed to them only as Theresa May was going to lunch in Brussels; the frantic phone calls that followed stopped the deal in its tracks.
The issue of the Irish border is important, but not as challenging as the Irish government has made it.