NEWS this week that Simon Hoare MP, chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, has met the UDA and the UVF in an attempt to sell the Windsor Framework to them is an indicator of the grotesque pass we find ourselves at. Our future is once again being discussed with a coterie of killers, thugs and bully-boys.  

Mr Hoare is no parvenu to the politics of these six counties, unlike some of the Tory grotesques who have thrown themselves behind recalcitrant unionism in its attempt block progress. He has shown a lively and informed interest in the North and has not been shy about delivering uncomfortable truths to unionist leaders at times when they needed to hear them. But his goodwill and commitment notwith-standing, he can never be aware at a London remove of what the people he is meeting are really about, what they represent and why they exist.

Were Mr Hoare to pull off a miracle and persuade the men he met to abandon their opposition to the EU-UK deal, to whom does he imagine they would issue their order to back the Windsor Framework? The UDA and the UVF are not centralised and disciplined single organisations, they are a collection of uncontrolled and uncontrollable gangs, often at daggers-drawn with each other. They are engaged in a wide range of criminality from drugs to extortion to money-lending, the vast majority of their activities draining the lifeblood from the communities they risibly purport to represent. 

Would the coke dealers in one area go along with any deal? Perhaps. But then what if their putative comrades running protection rackets in an adjacent area decide to tell the ‘negotiators’ where to go? Asking a scattered collection of criminal enterprises to come together on a single issue would be an exercise in utter futility.

But such a consideration is useful only insofar as it highlights the benign naivety of Mr Hoare, for it’s an entirely moot point. The UDA and UVF will no more agree to give their unconditional backing to the Windsor Framework than they will agree to give up their top-of-the-range SUVs or their Turkish orthodontry. And be under no illusion: there can be no partial backing of the deal, no demands for further tinkering. The EU has made it crystal-clear that it will countenance no further discussion on the Withdrawal Agreeement on top of those that brought about the huge compromises that make up the Windsor Framework.

We know what message the DUP send out every time they sit down with paramilitary gangsters assembled under the tattered umbrella of the LCC – that being Protestant and loyalist are reason enough for a seat at the table, regardless of what you’ve been doing before you sit down or what you’ll be getting up to afterwards. But what message does meeting such people send out to families continuing to struggle to pay their bills and cope with collapsing services? It tells them that armed gangs can have a say in their future, that the voice of criminals is more important than theirs.