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JUDE COLLINS: Natives get restless as Johnson pays a visit

On JANUARY, 1779, Captain Cook’s ship the Resolution arrived in Hawaii for the first time and some 10,000 native people greeted him as a god. “They saw a fair man with bright eyes, a high-bridged nose, light hair and handsome features.” Thousands of native people fell to their knees as Cook passed on his way to the Hawaiian temple, where a small pig was sacrificed to him. When Boris Johnson visited our own dear stateen on Monday of this week, there were no reports of porcine sacrifices or of people doing double genuflections as he passed. First Minister Michelle O’Neill nipped down to Dublin for a word with An Taoiseach Micheál Martin, then hurried back in time for her and Mary Lou McDonald and Conor Murphy to have a chat with the fair-haired man with the, um, handsome features. What did An Taoiseach tell the First Minister that might have helped her in that meeting? Nothing she didn’t know already. That this Tory demi-god is an incurable liar, that a pig’s tail is of more value than any promises he might make, and that Jeffrey Donaldson says he’ll judge the British Prime Minister by his actions, not his words. Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss have said they will this week introduce legislation that tears up unwanted bits of the Protocol. They say this is not so much breaking their written commitment in a signed international treaty as protecting the Good Friday Agreement. So here’s the question you gotta ask yourself: Is Johnson willing to sacrifice the withdrawal deal in its totality, which would probably lead to a UK-EU trade war, to keep the good knight Jeffrey and his party happy? The answer, alas, is No. Johnson couldn’t give a fiddler’s fandango about Sir Jeff, the DUP or our dear stateen. Except that in some way they match up with the Tories’ game plan. Then there’s Sir Jeff’s action-not-words demand. The brutal reality is that even if Liz Truss does introduce legislation that would, under British law, allow the DUP and everyone else to ignore the international treaty signed with the EU, even if that were to happen, it could take up to a year for the legislation to be passed. Before that – long, long before that – the EU and the US will have acted. The EU will have fired its opening shots of a trade war, and the US will tell Johnson to look elsewhere for a trade deal. The Bank of England this week said Brexit is costing the British economy over £400 million per week; a trade war with the EU and a cold shoulder from the US would hammer the British economy, which is already struggling with inflation rates last seen back in the 1980s. On Monday, Mary Lou McDonald accused Johnson of siding with the DUPers. Certainly the good knight Jeffrey had that smug little look back on his face. I suspect he’s so overwhelmed with the visit of the demi-god Johnson to Hillsborough he’s forgotten that when Bojo promises something, there’s a high chance he’ll do the opposite. But sooner or later the DUP must waken from their Tory-worship trance and see Johnson for what he is: An incurable liar. A few weeks after greeting Captain Cook as a god, back in the eighteenth century, the Hawaiians decided he was mortal after all. So when Cook paid them a return visit, hundreds of native warriors fell upon him with daggers and clubs and killed him. His corpse was dismembered, his flesh roasted and his bones separated and divided out to different parties. When people have been taken for fools once too often, they can turn very, very nasty.

JUDE COLLINS: Yes, it was seismic, despite the silly spin

POST-election, most commentators and politicians appear to agree that there are now three major parties in the North: Sinn Féin, the DUP and the Alliance Party. DUP people project a more self-serving picture, pointing out that the DUP did not have an electoral meltdown and that DUP + UUP+ TUV negates Sinn Féin’s numbers. In other words, unionists were the real winners in the election. Excuse me, Virginia, I’m just going out to empty a bucket of iced water over my head. Ah... That’s better. There are other ways of looking at the polling. In the 2017 election, nationalist votes came to around 334,000; in the election just completed, nationalist votes total came to 351,000. That’s an increase of almost 17,000. In the 2017 election, unionism got 359,000 votes; in 2022, unionism got 349,000: that’s a fall total of some 10,000. As Bob Dylan sang a long time ago, it don’t take a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I remember – maybe you do too – when commentators said it’d be really significant if some day a Sinn Féin Minister in the North were to meet with his/her Southern counterpart, and that counterpart was also Sinn Féin. What last weekend presented us with is bigger – much bigger. Now what’s to be anticipated is the day a Sinn Féin First Minister in the north meets with a SF Taoiseach in the south.

JUDE COLLINS: The simple truth about elections

ELECTIONS look simple. You go into a booth, you put your mark beside your favoured candidate – in this election you add a second mark beside your second preference and so on – and you leave the booth, nursing the warm glow of having done your civic duty.Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that. Here are five matters on which you might want to reflect. 1. Parties don’t have a policy, they have policies. Those who lament the orange/green split in voting clearly don’t get this fact. For the most part, people who vote Sinn Féin or the DUP probably do so because of the party’s policy or position on the constitutional question. But there is also a large number who vote Sinn Féin or DUP for other reasons – the party’s approach to health or education or the Irish language. And others who vote for one of those parties for a mixture of reasons, a range of offered policies. One thing for sure – it’s time we heard an end to tripe about tribes and obsession with the constitutional question and you can’t eat a flag. Having strong feelings about NEI remaining a part of the UK or equally strong feelings about the need for a new Ireland without borders or outside interference – both are totally valid reasons, and there’s nothing dreary or stuck-in-the-past or simplistic about that voting motivation. 2. Distractions can mess with your head. The biggest distraction at present is the Ukraine war. There are people in the South, notably Simon Coveney, who now tell us they are keen on beefing up the Irish defence forces by 50 per cent and spending a lot more money on those forces than the measly €1 billion they currently cost each year. In fact, Coveney and other Southern politicians have declared that post-Ukraine the south of Ireland must reconsider its traditional neutrality. No-one in Dublin 4 seems to have noticed that some centuries ago a foreign power invaded Ireland and is still here. Upping the South’s capacity to contribute military muscle abroad is like someone rushing to the next street to help put out a fire, while the flames lick from the windows of their own house. 3. Many say the Alliance Party will do well in this election. They will, if enough people vote for them. Traditionally, the Alliance Party has insisted that it is not interested in the orange v green of things, that it is concerned with health, education, jobs. Sensible stuff. Those concerned about constitutional issues, Alliance has always argued, are fighting old and pointless battles. But in recent months, with talk of a border poll in the headlines, Alliance has been fumbling around, trying to locate the reverse gear. 4. The unionist parties – the DUP, the UUP and the TUV – all have made clear that democracy can stretch only so far, and that a Sinn Féin First Minister could stretch it to breaking point. TUV leader Jim Allister, to his credit, has come clean and condemned any notion of a SF First Minister, and further condemned any ’stooge’ unionist party’ that would ‘prop up’ a SF First Minister. The DUP and the UUP have refused to say what they would do. Their respect for democracy appears to depend on who’s winning. 5. Finally, Jeffrey Donaldson has declared that Sinn Féin, should they emerge as largest party after the election, will do handstands in the street and then start planning for a ‘divisive border poll’. You may be sure if the Shinners have a good election they’ll rejoice – was Jeffrey expecting them to weep? As to working for a ‘divisive’ border poll: –come on, Jeffrey, old bean. Get your head out of your oxter. All polls are divisive – I vote for Party X, you vote for Party Y. It’s called politics. You do believe in politics and democracy, Jeffrey – don’t you? As for those people planning a quiet day on the couch this Thursday: you do know that if you don’t vote, you’ll deserve the politicians you didn’t vote for? Thursday could be a turning point in Ireland’s history. So on Thursday, do your bit and mark that ballot.

JUDE COLLINS: Brussels dealing with a Tory Wizard of Oz

WHY do so many countries abhor what Russia is doing in the Ukraine? Primarily because so many people are being killed, wounded, displaced. But beyond that barbarism, there lies a second reason for disgust: Putin, by invading the Ukraine, is showing contempt for international rules. But Putin is not alone. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have recently paraded a similar contempt. According to the Financial Times: “Under the proposed legislation, which has not yet been presented to the cabinet, [British] ministers would have unilateral powers to switch off key parts of the Protocol in UK law, including border checks on goods travelling to the region [NEI] from Great Britain.” In case the wording isn’t clear, what the British are planning is to run their critical eye over an international treaty they’ve signed up to and figure how best to break it. Which is, of course, what the West accuses Putin of doing by invading the Ukraine. Putin will be delighted for Johnson to go back on his word and thumb his nose at international law. The West is intent on presenting a united front in its condemnation of Russia for breaching international law and order, but here we have the UK, one of the main stalwarts condemning Russia’s flouting of International law, intent on – you got it – flouting international law. Jacob Rees-Mogg , the original comic book Tory Toff, is the UK’s ‘Brexit Opportunities Minister’, and he has claimed the UK has the right to do what it wants if Brussels doesn’t do what the UK wants. So Johnson’s government says that, after the Assembly election, it will pass a bill that effectively sends a JCB digger through the agreement they made with Brussels. That will put at risk the whole Withdrawal agreement, which could end in a trade war. Once a trade war starts, it’s essential to protect your own trading area. The UK, Johnson effectively says, will ignore the agreed Irish Sea border and allow goods to flow unchecked from Britain to Ireland. What does he believe the EU will do then, as the trade war escalates? Like any country or group of countries, the EU would have to position its border checks elsewhere, and the only border arrangement that most of us can see would be the reinstitution of a hard border across Ireland. Of course, Johnson isn’t totally insane. He very likely hopes his tough-guy act will frighten the EU and that they’ll find a way to make the checks on goods between Britain and NEI so light they won’t really exist. Will it work? Almost certainly not. The EU is in negotiation mode, willing to make Britain-NEI trade as smooth as possible. It is not in surrender mode, willing to ditch an agreement reached after long hours and acres of patience. And I would guess Johnson knows that. What we may get, once the May elections are over, are a few wrinkles in the Protocol ironed out, so Johnson can go back to his party and announce a famous victory. The DUP will also be given an ‘Ulster’ fig-leaf to cover their embarrassment as the Protocol stays in place. The more we see Johnson in action, the more his style mirrors that of the Wizard of Oz. You’ll remember that Dorothy eventually discovers the mighty Wizard, with his thunderous scary voice, is really nothing more than a weedy old man with a very loud microphone.The DUP, God help them, are preparing to join forces with the Tories to rid the UK of the Protocol. Stand by for a shrunken DUP finding out, too late, that Johnson’s government doesn’t mind promising the moon and delivering horse-manure.

JUDE COLLINS: Unionists losing their grip on steering wheel

IN February this year, the leader of the DUP Jeffrey Donaldson said: “We have previously outlined how we appreciated the need of the European Union to protect the integrity of its single market borders... and we believe there are solutions if the practical will is there.” Almost immediately the senior ranks of his party issued a firm correction of their leader’s words: “The Irish Sea border must go, progress is only made in Northern Ireland when unionists and nationalists can support the deal.” The TUV leader Jim Allister also gave Jeffrey reason to think again. He declared that the DUP would have to answer to voters if they had indeed changed their policy. Faced with right-wing attacks from within his party and without, Jeffrey rushed out reassurance to the unionist right-wingers: “Some of our political critics are attempting to claim the DUP is not opposed to the Northern Ireland protocol... It is the actions of this party... that have highlighted that the Protocol is not compatible with stable local arrangements.” So now. Jeffrey puts a timid toe in the sea of common sense and quickly discovered it is populated by foot-chomping sharks. He knows the Protocol is a win-win for NEI – unfettered trade with the rest of the UK, unfettered trade with that part of the EU south of the border. But he also knows it’s risking his political life to say it out loud. So are Jim Allister and the right-wing of the DUP mad when they take exception to being offered advantages the rest of the UK doesn’t have? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. Allister and DUP right-wingers fear that the Protocol is about more than just trade and business. It’s all very well for nationalists and republicans to say that any change in the constitutional status of the North must wait on a majority of people in the North voting for it. But if the island of Ireland trades as one unit, leaving “the mainland” to plough its lonely Brexit furrow, there is a danger that resistance to political unity in Ireland will have been softened up. People like it when trade flourishes. And the step from economic unity to political unity may begin to seem attractive to hitherto hardline hearts. That would be an appalling vista, and it’s driving some in political unionism mad. When you’ve been operating the NEI vehicle for a century, you get very jumpy indeed when hands obviously inferior to yours start gripping the steering wheel. You feel as if the vehicle has begun to turn southwards and that all you hold dear is at risk. As Jim Molyneux said a long time ago, the end of armed conflict was the greatest threat to unionism. If you’re a nationalist you should know the one place that right-wing unionism wants you far away from is a voting booth. As they see it, your mark on the ballot paper could ultimately mean the realisation of their worst nightmares. Of course they believe in democracy, but not if it means their wee country is going to be stolen from under their noses and a Shinner First Minister installed. You’ve probably seen that Glasgow Rangers will be playing Leipzig on May 5. The date has passed for postal votes but the call has gone out that an exception should be made, otherwise the decent people travelling from NEI to support Rangers would be deprived of their democratic franchise. Stand by for other cries of “Foul!” In the coming days. After all, if you’re spooked by the thought of a republican First Minister, you’ll need all the excuses available for declaring that the election was stolen from unionism. The grim face of the besieged planter, stripped of its decades-old sense of entitlement, is not a pretty sight.

JUDE COLLINS: Ukraine is now proving a handy distraction

IN politics, one skill central to survival is the ability to distract. If someone’s coming at you with a knife, it’s a great advantage if you can persuade them there’s a bear right behind them, thirsting for their blood. Which brings us to Boris Johnson’s meeting in the Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Johnson used the occasion to tell the Ukrainian President how gung-ho the British Government were about helping Ukrainian refugees, and to assure him that British weapons of all sorts were on their way so Ukrainians could kill Russians more efficiently. Let me not be too harsh. Johnson is no doubt moved by the pictures of distraught refugees fleeing for their lives. But while he could have called Zelensky on the phone and conveyed his support, the TV pictures of the pair were gold-dust for Johnson.

JUDE COLLINS: Doug’s lifetime of service is put to the test

DOUG Beattie has at least one thing in common with Prince Andrew: his experience of ‘serving’ in the British armed forces has left its mark. With Prince Andrew, as most of us know, his ‘service’ in the Falklands/Malvinas has left him incapable of sweating. With Doug Beattie, his service has left him with inescapable memories of the horror of war. According to the BBC website, Doug was surprised by this. “I never really thought that at the age of 40 I would have to thrust a bayonet through another person and yet I had to do that in September 2006 and I watched a man die at the end of my rifle.” Was Doug thinking of that when he launched the UUP’s election campaign in front of a battleship? Perhaps. He certainly looked a little wild-eyed, with a stiff breeze blowing his hair around as he spoke. But the bit in his speech that was truly hair-raising was when he said: “There will be no united Ireland in my lifetime, there will no united Ireland in my children's lifetime.” I don’t know what age Doug’s children are. Doug himself is fifty-six and a bit overweight, but good, I would say, for another twenty or thirty years. And his children, as far as I know, are healthy too – they’ll probably go on for another, what, fifty years? So why did Doug say, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that a reunited Ireland is more than fifty years away? Because he thinks he knows what his electorate want to hear. To their ears, Doug’s definitive assertion will be sweet, sweet music. It mightn’t be the truth but it has a delicious ring. And it offered a practical element too: Doug says we should all just park this very distant UI project and get on with debating the bread-and-butter issues. Unfortunately for him, Doug’s words will make many unionists roll their eyes and spit in the street. The UUP ratings have taken a serious tumble in recent weeks, and the hissing sound you hear is the air going out of the Beattie Bounce. When Mark Carruthers kept asking him if he’d be prepared to serve as deputy First Minister with a Sinn Féin First Minister, an unhappy Doug ducked and squirmed to avoid giving a yes/no answer. If he’d had his rear nailed to the fence, he couldn’t have been firmer in his refusal to say yes or no.

JUDE COLLINS: Jeffrey and Doug have their crocodile moment

STEPHEN Nolan has been having a tough time recently. Both the DUP and Sinn Féin, for their own reasons, are not participating in his various programmes as they once did, which seriously weakens him. Long-term, you simply can’t go on commenting on political matters in our little stateen and not have access to the two most popular political parties.

JUDE COLLINS: Jeffrey and Micheál face a common challenge

IF you were to draw a graph of Micheál Martin’s voice, it would be very spikey. Micheál talks quickly and in sudden bursts, so that the listener has to gallop to keep up with him. In contrast, a graph of the good knight Jeffrey Donaldson’s voice would consist of gentle loops, rarely going in for the excited gasp, almost always producing a moderated, controlled pace. But though they may talk differently, there are interesting parallels between the two men.

JUDE COLLINS: Southern antipathy to change must be challenged

ANDREW Trimble is an interesting man. He’s a unionist from Coleraine who also happens to have played rugby for Ireland. He gave an extended interview recently, in which he expressed disappointment at the overwhelming numbers of people from the south who said they wouldn’t be willing to change the national anthem as part of negotiations on a united Ireland.

JUDE COLLINS: Sinn Féin’s big second preference problem

OPINION polls are such fun, aren’t they? Especially if your lot is doing well and the other lot aren’t. But they can also be very misleading. Take the south’s last general election. The polls weren’t doing any handstands about Sinn Féin, yet that party emerged with a dramatically increased number of seats in the Dáil. They’d have got even more if they’d run more candidates. So the polls can tell a story in prose and an election can deliver one in glorious poetry. Here in our dear stateen of NEI, Sinn Féin, to judge by the polls, are flying. It’s not a question of are they ahead, but how far are they ahead. Behind them, the DUP and the UUP are tearing lumps out of each other, the DUP is tearing lumps out of itself, and the TUV is declaring both the DUP and the UUP are soggy on the protocol. So a lot of nationalists and republicans assume that Sinn Féin will waltz in as the biggest party and claim the role of First Minister for its own. Big mistake. In addition to the usual closing of ranks in the face of a perceived nationalist threat, there’s the question not just of votes but second preference votes. What parties will give Sinn Féin their second preference? Not the TUV, not the UUP, not the DUP. The SDLP or Alliance? They might. Or then again they mightn’t. The SDLP sees itself in direct opposition to Sinn Féin; ask Colum Eastwood, he’ll tell you. And you don’t give second preferences to your direct opponents. Will Alliance toss Sinn Féin many second preferences? Hardly. The Alliance Party is, by default, a unionist party. When you have no view on the constitutional question, you are in favour of the status quo. So it’s hard to see how the Alliance Party will feed second preferences to a party that wants to bring gallant little NEI out of the UK.

JUDE COLLINS: Foreign war takes focus off local conflict

THOSE of us interested in politics need to keep reminding ourselves that not everybody shares that interest. On an everyday basis, the majority of people don’t. And even when you are interested, there’s a terrible temptation to go for Politics 101: the simplified version, where the lines are clear and good guys wear white hats and bad guys black hats. Take the Ukraine. (And please don’t say, ‘Like Putin is doing.’ Virginia.) Here we have Russia, a vastly stronger country, interfering in the politics of a neighbouring country – not just interfering, but sending in tanks and missiles to blast the Ukrainians into submission. Much has been made of a ‘rambling’ speech by Putin, and there are those who have called him mad. Others have called him Hitler with nuclear weapons. Certainly, to look at his actions suggests a duplicitous and cruel man. Even looking at that oddly blank face is unnerving. But when you saw those huge clouds of black smoke on the news, as you heard the boom of explosives, did it remind you of anything? It did me. It had many of the features of the invasion of Iraq, of Syria, of Afghanistan. And is it possible that Putin plans to take down the Ukrainian government and install a puppet government amenable to his will? Probably. But the practice of regime change, whether in South America or the Middle East, isn’t something that only Russian tyrants do. We all know that the US and the UK have no hesitation in enforcing regime change when they deem it necessary. The pity is that the UN Secretary General hasn’t been nearly as loud in his condemnations when it’s the West that’s involved, as it is now that Russia is involved. And in exchange for German reunification, the US Secretary of State James Baker promised Gorbachev that there would be no eastward expansion of Nato.

JUDE COLLINS: Marchers feel the Protocol’s icy blast

YOU probably saw that video clip last week on the internet, of the ‘Randalstown-South Londonderry’ wans against the Protocol. There they were, a substantial body of men, union flags flying, trudging heads-down against some brutal wind and snow. There was something magnificent about them – they reminded me of history accounts I read years ago of Napoleon’s army in 1812, pushing ever deeper into a Russian winter. On they went, every step growing weaker as the icy cold bit into them and eventually swallowed them. In what must be the under-statement of the year, someone on Twitter commented on the Randalstown-South Londonderry lot: “There must be better ways of spending a Friday night.” Meanwhile, in Markethill, Sammy Wilson was at the microphone telling the assembled crowd how the EU was trying to annex our gallant little NEI, just like Vladimir Putin had annexed the Crimea. But just as he raised his arm and opened his mouth, the boos began. “Traitor!” his audience shouted. “Boooo!” Sammy tried to calm them by telling them that he had unashamedly voted for Brexit, but that only made them madder. Likewise his warning that the “unionist-hating BBC” was recording this tonight and would be delighted to broadcast unionist division. “Lundy! Traitor!”

JUDE COLLINS: Jeffrey’s attempt to man-up is not going well

IN any judgement on Jeffrey Donaldson’s recent exertions which collapsed Stormont we’d do well to take note of the internal dissension in the DUP ranks. Ferrets high on acid would be friendly and cuddly compared to some of the bad blood among DUP politicians these days. What happened could be interpreted as a kind of ricochet pattern. Faced with the bleak prospect of being Nowhere Man, Edwin Poots may have felt the need to show how to stand up to the Brits and their infernal Protocol. So he called off border checks on agricultural goods. Then Paul Givan, seeing his good mate doing a high wire act, felt compelled to follow and announced his resignation as First Minister. This double whammy left Jeffrey Donaldson with no other option than to declare an immediate end to Stormont if the accursed Protocol wasn’t consigned to the Tory dust-bin.

JUDE COLLINS: Bloody Sunday is a nightmare from which we still haven’t woken

AMID all the ceremonies, all the speeches, all the suffering relatives clutching poster pictures of their loved ones shot dead on Bloody Sunday fifty years ago, one question demands answer: how did they get away with it? Because Bloody Sunday wasn’t Bloody Sunday night. It was Bloody Sunday afternoon. The thousands of people present were witnesses to the event. Fourteen innocent people were mortally wounded that day. We know who did it – the Parachute Regiment. So how did they get away with it? The answer is, the British establishment. The bodies of the dead were scarcely cold before the lies began. The commanding officer, Wilford, insisted that his men had been fired on first. Remember that barked command not to shoot unless fired upon, which is heard every time that infamous film clip is played? Did the barking officer know what was coming? Had he made the decision that it should happen, and wanted to get his justification in first?

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