Is Doug Beattie smart? Not very. As a former military man – at which he was very good, being awarded the Military Cross – he would have known you shouldn’t leave your rear end exposed to enemy fire, however tired and emotional you might feel of a Saturday night. Ignoring such Battle 101 rules, he posted a tweet which practically begged Edwin Poots to launch a missile at his political rear. Edwin obliged, and the Pandora’s Box of Bad Tweets was bust open and a swarm of them began biting Doug in the bum.
Does it matter what politicians say? Isn’t it what they do that counts? Well, yes and no. Arlene Foster called Sinn Féin a crocodile, and Sinn Féin thrived on her words. That said, nobody in the DUP thought she should step down as leader – not even when she did the RHI thing and cost the public hundreds of millions of pounds. Which would you rather – be insulted or have wads of cash removed from your pocket?
And yet the party most delighted by the turn of events today is of course the DUP, which can go tsk, tsk, tsk and hope that disillusioned unionist voters will return to them. They may well do. But perhaps they’re more likely to turn to the Alliance Party, since under Doug Beattie the UUP was attractive to liberal unionists, not the DUP.
But seeing as how we’re into casting the first stone v forgiveness, is the DUP a Christian party? Well, Edwin Poots is a very religious man who takes the Bible at its literal word and figures humanity got started just 6,000 years ago. Ian Paisley, the party founder, was extremely religious, so much so that he spent many of his speeches warning against the Whore of Babylon and the perils of Romish idolatry.
But the DUP is not a very Christian party, in terms of forgiveness and loving your neighbour as yourself. Who could forget Ian Paisley Jr’s comment on gays and how, thinking about them just turned his stomach? And back in the day, when members of the Women’s Coalition stood up to speak, they were regularly met by a chorus of “Moooh!”s from the DUP ranks. And of course the DUP leader in the Assembly is a devout Christian, despite whipping that scholarship to the Gaeltacht from under the nose of young Irish learners; and lighting , with a wide smile, bonfires festooned with expressions of hatred and intolerance.
Whatever the case, the UUP was prospering under Doug Beattie’s leadership. Now,alas, there are clear signs that his leadership has been seriously if not terminally wounded by this plague of tweets. But do political parties choose leaders on the basis of their tolerance and respect for others, or for their skill in the political arena, where ruthlessness and political decapitation are the kind of skills that are needed?
Here’s my advice, Doug: hang in there. Go big on the Afghanistan ‘service’ thing and how it has traumatised you, so you sometimes send out crazy tweets, but that nobody’s perfect, including the DUP, so can we all get back to being outraged about something real, like the protocol? You could even hint you’re a strong political leader just as you were a strong military leader, and that you carry the mental and physical wounds of your ‘service’. And maybe try to bring the conversation round to the UDR and how Soldier Jeffrey looks like something out of Dad’s army, when placed beside Soldier Doug. That just might do it.
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