RON McDowell decided not to go the Cenotaph to pay tribute to the fallen on Sunday because Michelle O'Neill was there. On the face of it, this seems extreme. Ron not going, I mean. Not Michelle.
I mean, it's one of most important days of the year – if not thee most important day – for Loyal Ulster and for Ron. Can there be any more solemn and profound expression of Britishness than to stand at the city's premier war memorial, bow your head and think of those who gave all their tomorrows for your today? Is there a more quintessentially British scene in this proud city of Empire than the city burghers laying poppy wreaths at the City Hall while the final notes of the bugler's Last Post drift off and up towards the Belfast Hills which the young men of Belfast sailed away from to die in the poppy-strewn fields of Flanders or the burning sands of North Africa?
If this was the essence of my culture and my sense of self, if the British armed forces meant as much to me as I'm constantly told they mean to Ron and his compatriots, you'd need a couple of infantry regiments and an armoured division with extensive air cover to keep me away from the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. Ron, however, has been kept away by the prospect of a woman from Tyrone being in his eyeline.
Does the iconic display of patriotism and gratitude really lose its meaning for Ron if there's somebody there he doesn't like? I'll take Ron at his word and accept that it does, adding only that I'm not sure those who climbed the short wooden steps to go over the top on the sound of the Somme whistle would be overly impressed by his withdrawal. If those young men stood up straight and walked with chest out and shoulders back into a withering and murderous hail of white-hot MG 08 bullets the size of a man's thumb, I'd have thought it was the least that Ron could do to pretend that Michelle O'Neill wasn't there. He could even roll his eyes as she stepped forward if it made him feel better. But no – he's gone global thermo-nuclear on the Cenotaph thing. Again.
I'll push this exhausted military metaphor beyond its limits and say it seems to me that Ron's Cenotaph withdrawal is more than just a tut of disapproval – it's part of a war that's broken out between his party, the TUV, and the DUP, with just 18 months to go before the next Assembly election. To be fair to Jim Allister's small but magnificently angry army, it was the DUP that kicked off hostilities. It had to, in many ways. It faces the twin dangers of being outflanked in the staunchness stakes by Jim and Ron and Timothy Gaston and, ah… well… that’s it for the TUV, really, and the less realistic but nevertheless daunting prospect of Nigel Farage’s Reform eating their loyal lunch.
QUESTION: Will Nigel Farage thicken the unionist soup by running Reform candidates here in the next Assembly election?
Which is why we’ve seen in recent weeks party leader Gavin Robinson go from Uncle Buck to What the f**k! Many of us were still reeling from his jawdropping decision to stick a Para flag on a social media response he posted after the Soldier F verdict when the East Belfast MP declared himself in favour of mass deportations and/or the offshore detention of illegal migrants. He backed a Commons petition forwarded by Farage’s former pal Rupert Lowe urging a more robust response to the problem of small boats in Portavogie and Jihadis in Ballyhack. The petition Gavin signed reads: “The UK is facing unprecedented levels of illegal migration, particularly through small boat crossings. We believe current use of hotels and temporary accommodation is unsustainable, costly and dangerous. We believe that establishing offshore detention centres would act as a strong deterrent, prevent absconding, and allow for the swift processing and removal of those who enter illegally. We consider the detention and mass deportation of all illegal migrants in the UK is a necessity.”
None of this suits Gav. It’s like Alan Carr calling for free school meals to be cancelled. He’s clearly more comfortable doing his milquetoast podcast or espousing harmless and only vaguely unionist sentiments in a baritone half-whisper more suited to a CBeebies voiceover than a DUP conference. But needs must and if the backroom boys think he needs to take a few nasty pills, then he’s clearly not averse to that.
Rookie MLA Jon Burrows seems willing to join in the fun. Up to this week in the five minutes since he was handed a UUP seat in North Antrim, the former cop seemed content to carve a name for himself in his new party as the Ace Ventura of Parliament Buildings. He sprang noisily and passionately to the aid of a comfort dog inside a jail, causing party officers to wonder whether they’d been sold a pup. And when he then applied his detective powers to the fate of some ornamental fish in a pond in the same clink, the party might have been forgiven for thinking that they’d signed up the wrong kind of vet.
Jon’s the leading candidate for the leadership of the UUP, mostly because he’s about the only elected rep in the party who hasn’t been leader before. But it doesn’t seem as though his leadership – if it comes to pass – will be marked by any daring or new thinking. He threw his weight behind DUP Education Minister Paul Givan in Monday’s Assembly vote of no confidence, which didn’t come as a huge surprise, until you stop to think that maybe a former senior policeman should be led by the legal and diplomatic technicalities of the Israel-Palestine issue. If the UK government won’t send a minister to within a Biblical ass’s roar of the occupied territories then there’s a reason for that. A good old British reason.
In the event, Jon preferred to spend his time pointing the finger at the guy who brought forward the no-confidence motion, Gerry Carroll of People Before Profit, for having expressed support for the Palestinian resistance. The most notable other lefty agitator who backs the right of the Palestinian people to resist Israeli occupation is the, ah, United Nations.
Even as I write this I understand the reality that when the time comes for Jon to actually get elected in North Antrim he’s not going to threaten the top of the first preferences league with an appeal to the people of Harryville to pay attention to the UN Security Council. But then Jon knew that when he said he was attracted to the UUP because of its ability to reach beyond traditional unionist voters.
So that’s all three unionist parties already locked in a contest for the true-blue hearts and steadfast minds of loyal Ulster – and the next Assembly elections aren’t until May 2027. It’s clearly going to be a long 18 months and it’s only going to get worse the closer the election gets, needless to say. I’m already confused about whether I’m more angered/bemused by Gavin’s Para tweet, his B&M Bargains Farage impression, Ron McDowell’s retreat from the Cenotaph, Paul Givan’s official/unofficial trip to occupied Palestine or Jon Burrows marking the start of a new UUP era in North Antrim by... rowing in behind the DUP.
As thoughts increasingly turn to electoral survival in the coming months, I’m going to have to start keeping a log if I want to keep up because the performative staunchness is going to be absolutely Homeric. And that’s not a reference to the ancient Greek poet who knew and wrote a lot about war and conflict. That’s a reference to the balding cartoon family guy whose gormlessness provokes equal amounts of pity and laughter.
