FASTEN your seatbelts, we’re in for a bumpy 18 months.
That’s how long it is until the next Assembly election, barring a collapse of the institutions and/or a decision to go early. And it’s crystal clear that the DUP has decided to go global thermo-nuclear in its previously desultory attempts to outdo the TUV.
The last few weeks have seen a succession of macho posturings from the largest unionist party, culminating in Tuesday’s failed attempt to stop the Economy Minister, Sinn Féin’s Caoimhe Archibald, from restricting trade contact with the genocidal Israeli regime.
The DUP can disagree with the Minister’s decision all it likes, but it knew that the ‘call-in’ mechanism it deployed to convene Tuesday’s meeting of the Executive was always going to fail to overturn the decision. The extraordinary and seldom-used mechanism was deployed only for the optics, only to show the wavering hardliners that it’s not just Jim Allister and his red-faced Stauncherati who can snarl and snap and whinge for Britain.
The performative nonsense over the Economy Minister’s move is added to a growing list of culture wars and green and orange setpieces designed to explode any perception that the DUP is on the road to dropping its ‘Nasty Party’ image. The incredibly crass decision of party leader Gavin Robinson to tweet the Parachute Regiment badge after Soldier F was found not guilty was quickly followed by a Faragesque statement from the same man on the issue of immigration, demanding the “mass deportation” of illegal immigrants. It matters little that Mr Robinson is rubbish at adopting a hard man posture thanks to his rather avuncular appearance and his diffident demeanour. It was the effort that counted.
We can throw into that mix Education Minister Paul Givan’s outrageous decision to travel to Israel on a trip paid for by the Israeli government. Diplomacy and protocol went out the window as the line between official and non-official duties became blurred to the point of disappearing. The Minister’s visit to a school in the occupied West Bank only added to the sense that the visit was undertaken to send a clear message to a clearly defined cohort of our population.
It’s all ultimately self-defeating, of course, because there is only one way that the clanging train heading towards a border poll can be slowed down or stopped. And that’s by winning over two other cohorts: i) those who are instinctively or culturally unionist but who are worried about the growing disparity in living standards between north and south; ii) those who are instinctively or culturally nationalist but are quite happy to go with the status quo as long as they feel as if things are beginning to settle down. In their latest surge towards the extreme, the DUP is not only failing to win over these people, it is actively driving them away.
The intra-unionist fight over a finite and shrinking group of hardliners makes for a busy news cycle. But for the union the news is all bad.
