It’s good to see enemies become friends. The DUP and the UUP have decided to put any and all differences behind them and mount a combined challenge in the Westminster election. Well maybe not combined. I don’t think it’s going to be an Agreed Candidate, in the sense of a candidate outside both parties and acceptable to both. It’s more a carve-up, really. For example Tom Elliott of the UUP is to be the standard bearer in Fermanagh/South Tyrone. The DUP will stand aside there in order maximise the unionist vote.
Which got me thinking: apart from the union with Britain, what other points. if any, do the DUP and the UUP share? Sinn Féin, in the face of this united unionism, have called on the SDLP to form a united nationalist front, but already Alban Maginness has shot down that particular bird. Why? Because he says his party doesn’t indulge in sectarian politics.Oh come on, Alban. You can do better than that.
Let’s be blunt: the UUP hate the DUP’s guts and vice versa, but they hate even more the prospect of nationalist/republicans getting any more seats and in fact would hope they’d end up having less. So they’ve done their pact. The SDLP hate Sinn Féin’s guts, and vice versa, but it seems the SDLP don’t hate even more the prospect of unionists gaining more seats. Because they’re not into sectarian politics? Would somebody take that cat out before it has a fit. The notion of Irish re-unification is different in nature from a belief in or rejection of transubstantiation. And pretending that politics is really sectarianism is a pretty illogical point for a barrister to come out with.
What would be an interesting exercise would be to check what, apart from the union question, the DUP and the UUP differ on. Off the top of my head I can think of nothing. And likewise, it’d be an interesting exercise to check what, apart from a desire for Irish re-unification, the SDLP and Sinn Féin differ on. Off the top of my head I can think of nothing. (Assuming, that is, the SDLP are still not a post-nationalist party.)
Which leads you to wonder: what are the SDLP and the UUP for? What purpose do they serve? Other than that both were once the biggest political parties pro or anti- the union, nothing really. Ditto the SDLP points of divergence from Sinn Féin. What we’re seeing from the UUP and the SDLP is the naked and nervous wish to survive. Both have served their purpose in the history of this state. There’s nothing either has to offer that isn’t on offer from the bigger unionist or nationalist party. If they really had the interests of the union or Irish re-unification at heart, they’d do their respective side of the argument a favour by fading away. At least that way we’d have a clearer picture of who and how many are clinging to the union and who and how many are opposed. In fact, we might even get to the point where we’d see if there was a need for a referendum. Or not.
Off the top of my head: Sinn Féin deliver for their constituents. SDLP block every development going – check West Belfast – even if that development is good for the wider constituency, they would rather see the Shinners lose out, and therefor the people of the area.
All sorts of shenanigans afoot here to keep the SNP out. Danny Alexander, for example, has appealed to Tories to vote for him.
The SDLP can lecture all they want about sectarian politics – it’s nonsense.
The only reason they don’t want a pact with SF is that it wouldn’t be in their political interests.
The constituencies effect by the unionist pact do not impact on the SDLP – they have zero chance of picking up seats in any of them. They do need unionist votes in S.Down and Foyle and so a pact with SF isn’t a smart move for them.
Will part of Ulster continue to say No and Never?
Political unionism has failed to deliver economic prosperity or a stable system of government. Political unionism has failed to deal with educational underachievement. Political unionism is being used to implement Tory policies. Tory policies will continue to exploit current levels of unemployment and privatize public services. Some Tory politicians have openly expressed repugnance about having to depend on unionist politicians for political support. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
The SDLP is supposed to be a middle class party with some educated people in it.
But when it comes to election time somebody runs away with their collective brain.
For some reason the mad doctor at the helm would rather see unionist success than nationalist/republican success.
Its one thing to claim to have lofty principles, but when hanging onto them means absolutely no electoral success and the impending demise of your party, it shows a distinct lack of pragmatism.
Could no one please rescue the SDLP from this accursed doctor?
Reading the title of today’s blog one is reminded of an English author who, although not born in old Yorkshire, was still so good they named him twice: Jerome K. Jerome.
And then went on to bequeath to posterity a classic title with a tantalising absence of the number two: ‘Three Men and A Boat’. The first line of which reads: ‘Let your boat be light, packed only with what you need’.
It was the ‘packed’ that rhymed with the ‘pact; that put Perkie into reminder mode. For on both sides of the Border one finds in the runs up to the elections, short term and long term, a daily mirror image of the other: Jerome and Jerome divided only by K which might be text for Dyke.
In Norneverland we find the 3 menthol-scented parties in the 1 boat: DUP, UUP and the SDLP, each full of cool, clean Mr. Silvermints of both sexes according to the monolithic media. All united in a congenital detestation of the Shinners, a party full to the hilt of halitosis-breathing hairy backs in their hempen homespuns.
(On today’s Morning Ireland we had T. Gorman who is not, repeat NOT, a spin orderly for the SDLP. wax orgasmic about S. Mallon’s rhapsodising about the MP’s days under the bong bong of Big Ben).
The boat has yet to be named though these errorists might do so on the side of caution: avoid the Titanic 2 name. The prototype there encountered certain problems with pacts, ice-packs.
In the Free Southern Stateen, it’s a ditto kinda deal, for the 3 parties, read FG, FF and Labour. And the name of their barque might well be called ‘The Iron Lung’. Happily, it rhymes with ‘long’ which is leprechaun for ‘vessel’.
And in today’s monolithic media in the Deep South we had none other than the bullock-befriending John Bruton showing off a hitherto unsuspected skill, oops, skill set, that of boatbuilding. Though the hints were there: old bulkhead was always a dab hand at bilge pumping, not to mention ‘rigging’ though not of course where ‘votes’ are involved. Of course, not.
Today he showed off – in retirement – that this jolly good fellow is even better at the old decibel-high bellows, a la John Bull, and his iron lungs have lost nothing in iron if not in irony since retiring.
Today, curiously enough,he was lowering the boom at the Shinners. Having first given the readership of the ‘Republic’ an eyeful in a print outlet (either The Unionist Times of The Irish Dependent) he then seamlessly moved or was moved over to the microphone media to give the lucky listenership an earful.
His inherent modesty is still intacta, one is pleased to report as is evidenced from his opening lion’s roar, oops, line:
‘I write about the following matter with some feeling because I have devoted a significant amount of time and effort over 10 years or more to creating conditions in which, as part of a wider settlement,nationalists and unionists would share power and responsibility in the North’.
Ole ! Ole ! Ole !
Further down the piece the mellow bellow morphed into a series of rapid fire, shortsnorts, even as the dewlapped rancher from Royal Meath turned bullish, and amidst much earth-pawing and bullhorn-lowering came out with the J-word, which certainly caught an off-guard Perkie unawares:
-Juvenile.
That is the J-word he branded the Shinners with. For in doing so, and taken in tandem with the goring he proceeded then to subject the party to, gleefully, the former Prime Minister of the FSS left himself exposed to – gulp ! – the charge (allegedly) of (gasp) child abuse.
Allegedly.
Now, just as pact in Norneverland has a boating tragedy in fact to give it pause, so also has the pact in the Free Southern Stateen. And although the scale was smaller yet there is one not insignificant element of the latter which must give cause for pause to the numerologists among the 3 parties of the pact south of the Black Pig’s Dyke.
It features the number: 18.
As follows: just over a hundred years before the Titanic a large row boat carrying a cargo of local farmers, their families and their sheep set out from Annaghdown on the shores of Lough Corrib. Before long, an unruly sheep kicked his hoof through the bottom of the boat with the result that many bodies were later recovered from the lethal waters of the Corribean.
The reason why the tragedy has endured in the folk memory is because it prompted An File Dall,Raifteire/ Blind Raftery the Poet to craft a poem about the ill-fated raft:
Ma fhaighimse slainte is fada bheas tracht
Ar an meid a badh as Eanach Dhuin.
But the real kicker is the following:
The number of bodies recovered was: 18.
The percentage share of the recent poll for FF was: 18.
Not,mind you, that the hoof-kicking English language enthusiast John Bull Bruton, would be overly aware of that minor but not, perhaps, insignificant stat.
For the former modest Prime Minister would no more dream of stuffing leprechaun in to his mouth than a Son of the Prophet would taste pork.
Still, Perkie”s inner diffident philantropist is always available to render assistance to those in need.
Perkie – me hands are trimmlin’ with the laffin’ that does be leppin’out of my lips, and me at the kitchen table reading your latest epistle to the unwashed…I was going to highlight “bullock-befriending John Bruton” but then I came to “Further down the piece the mellow bellow morphed into a series of rapid fire, shortsnorts, even as the dewlapped rancher from Royal Meath turned bullish, and amidst much earth-pawing and bullhorn-lowering came out with the J-word, which certainly caught an off-guard Perkie unawares:
-Juvenile.” Oh my God – are we allowed to erect a blue plaque while you’re still living, Perkie? Maith thú ar fad! (My grip on the leprechaun is tenuous in the extreme but I trust you get my drift.
Would that ‘bullock-befriending’ were one’s own invention, Esteemed Blogmeister, but alas, sadly,no.
It was rather shamelessly filched from the sporran of one, J. Joyce whose coinage it was.
Of course, J. Joyce and J. Bruton were both schooled in the same Alma Cogan. from which they graduated with the same giggle in their voices, the recognisable giggle of self-congratulation.
That would be the Maximum Security Borstal known as Clongowes.
The name is derived from the leprechaun ‘Cluain Gabha’ / The Meadow of the Blacksmith which is rather apt for there the future captains of the officer class of Oirish society have all the rough edges hammered out of them
Unsurprisingly, .It is where J.Joyce first dreamt up the idea of the ‘smithy of his soul’ or something.
Clongowes is where Paddy Stink and Mickey Mud comes and where Patrick Inc and Michael Knightrhood goes. It is a truly harrowing experience but Pater and Mater think it is worth every last brown penny of the annual fee which is just a grubber kick short of 20 thou.
It is a ‘partner school’ with Portora in Enniskillen which just gowes to show there is nothing ‘nakedly sectarian’ about the ersatz Etonian ethos or school menu (the same pact lunches). of both these estimable institutions of education.
They are linked, it is said, by a Dort of the Moind.
Alas, it would appear that not only are things hammered out of the alumni (the majoiriy) but that, (gulp), certain things are also hammered into the minority.
Perkie knows all this because for generations it was an integral part of the Warbeckian patrimony to be schooled in Clongowes. But that all stopped with Guy Warbeck. That would be the (once) great uncle.
When he comes to Clongowes he is a regular, straight talking, straight walking guy but when he gowes from under the ornate gate there, eleven years later, there, in a peculiar mincing kind of gait, it is as……(gasp)….Gaylord Warbeck.
This was not immediately noticed until the fatal day when the Dame Dowager caught him,in front of the ornate King George gilt mirror, trying on his sister Penelope’s more intimate garments.
From that time onwards, we Warbeckians have all been home-schooled.Which may explain some of Perkie’s rather lamentable lapses in taste but which, in fairness, going forward, he does try manfully to keep to a min.
Another unfortunate downside to this otherwise tip top tutoring in the Towers is that one is deprived of forging links with the future Eileland elite in legal, financial and political circles which, naturelllement, is one of the bunchlocha / raisons d’etre of the Clongowes Borstal.
Which means that, yes, Ripley it or not, but even Warbeck Towers is feeling the financial pinch in these simultaneously crooked and straitened times. Heating costs,not to mention the Trotskyite demands of the domestic staff, are going through the turrets.
Thus, to keep a civilised quantity,if not quality, of caviar and champagne on the kitchen table it has been, regretfully found necessary to open the Cupboard to the unshorn public comprised of P. Stink and M. Mud. (Oh, the irony ! the irony !).
Arrangements for viewing (of the skeleton of Gaylord) can be made by prior appointment. (Phone: 19141918).
Beidh lacaiste/discount ag dul duit fein, Esteeemed Blogmeister.
We all need ‘a little black book with Perkie’s poems in’ (sorry Pink Floyd).
We could carry it about like a bible and reference it when times get tough (Enda Kenny could have done with one when Obama ignored his extended hand in the White House – no mention of that in the mainstream media).
In fact, I’m going to cancel my subscription of ‘Sacred Heart Messenger’ and the Christian Brothers’ ‘Our Boys’ to avail myself of said little black book.
Maith thú ar fad? Get outta here. It’s bloody ar fheabhas!
Mo Cheannaire, mo chara,
Be careful what you wish for.
Confucius O’Toore say: ‘Inclease demand, put up plice After arr, We live in exhorbitant intelest Times’.
If you were to be simplistic about all of it there’d be the realisation that what we are actually talking about here are not Political Parties at all…. but …people and their individual votes. In the end it’s the very same people voting for the DUP who previously voted UUP and Sinn Fein’s ranks have been swollen by people who previously voted for the SDLP under Seamus Mallon and John Hume’s leadership. People are no more complicated than that. They like to vote for perceived winners. They’ve just swapped clothes .That’s all.
You might say that those voters who voted for Sinn Fein in huge numbers and made them stronger than the SDLP , wanted the SDLP to be more in the mould of the modern Sinn Fein. They wanted the SDLP to be less of a fuddy duddy, cautious party. They wanted the SDLP to be less of a middle class party full of doctors and barristers and ex-teachers and more in touch with the ordinary working- man, struggling on the lowest wages. Those voters wanted a nationalist forward -looking party who looked and fought tough for something very specific. No ifs and no buts.Now that the Troubles had been put to rest , the only tough political game left was in Sinn Fein’s court.Sure there were some past messes from years of conflict to tidy up, but those new voters could see Sinn Fein’s profile getting stronger and their work in their communities.They might not like some of the stuff still clinging on from their republican past but they know that a younger generation will ease that all away eventually because all the battles will be fought politically alone.
What drives the unionist voters is another question. The DUP appears to be supported by those same people who previously voted UUP, but they seem to outsiders to be the same kind of very conservative people who support some very odd belief -systems which actually defy logic…Creationism and homophobia … for two.
Why there should be a division at all in unionism seems to be wholly based on conflicts of personality and not really on policies at all .It’s hard to see any real differences in political or social stances in either party ..for someone from a nationalist persuasion.It’s one thing wanting the union with Britain and having that as your political choice , but it is not a Britain that many modern presently -voting nationalists would ever recognise as an aspiration ..To them it sounds like the worst possible place to live…hidebound by the mad religiousness of an earlier more medieval mindset. A cross between Mary Whitehouse , Margaret Thatcher and Ian Paisley’s vision of a perfect Britain, It’s s the unionists conservative and frankly bigoted ,Bible-bound attempts to return everyone to some WASP past that so many find more off-putting than any union with Britain. You might argue that their collective attitude have destroyed the union long ago anyway and it is slowly bleeding out.
It looks like both the UUP and the SDLP are equally bleeding to death very slowly and pacts like this will soon be irrelevant anyway. The respective voters will simply shift over and the two then dominant parties will carve up Norneverland as the have always done.
With an appealing middle class prospect like Mairtín Ó Muilleoir running in South Belfast Alastair McDonald might have a problem holding onto that seat, not that Sinn Féin will win it but they might attract enough votes away from the SDLP for them to lose it!
The SDLP have been and will continue to be on a political “life support machine” for the foreseeable future! An opportunity of a nationalist electoral pact with Sinn Fein offered them some sense of life. They are a party with a pathetic leader, have little or no direction, their support base continues to decline and they offer no viable political alternative … What have they to loose? Since the departure of John Hume, the party has continued to limp on mortally wounded and like the Irish Parliamentary Party of old are heading for political extinction. Seems the SDLP hatred for Sinn Fein supersedes their opposition to the notion of further Unionist inroads being made. Yet again another poor political decision by the SDLP, but then again, I’m not suprised!
“Bullock befriending Bruton” has to be the political putdown of the century so far!
This is nothing new, either on the part of the SDLP or the unionist parties. A simple headcount identified the six counties as the best opportunity to create a mini orange state with a majority which was unlikely to ever be challenged. Sectarian bigotry was propped up by gerrymandering and all sorts of anti-democratic shenanigans to which successive British Governments turned a blind eye. This is simply another manifestation of the same principle of keeping the natives in check at any cost. I remember a time when The SDLP was not ashamed of its ideals, it is now a party viewed by unionists (and increasingly by nationalists) as an easy touch, no spine, no stomach for the fight, too willing to turn tail at the first sign of difficulty. Of course the SDLP will try to portray their current stance as “the right thing to do” in some way morally superior to the base approach of other parties rather than being politically motivated. However, by many it will be viewed as the SDLP cutting off the nationalist nose to spite its collective face. While they position themselves on the moral high ground I wonder what they will make of the resulting political landscape below which could see nationalist areas returning unionist candidates, and ultimately the demise of their own party.
Everything is political. Especially here. Party-politics does its best to mirror the political aspects to our lives, but can only do so to a certain degree. If we vote at all, we vote for the party we feel best reflects our political views. In this part of Ireland these views fall into either one of two camps.
Loathe as I am to admire Unionism, they at least make no bones about this. There can only be one winner. As long as these six counties remain part of the UK, then Unionism has ‘won’. Both the DUP and UUP realise this. Their sole aim is to preserve the Union at all costs. Whatever they might care to say, this pact has shown that there is absolutely no difference between the two parties. The DUP are just better at politics. That’s why they’re in power.
What sort of future Alasdair McDonnell imagines for us remains a mystery. He would do well to realise that its better to burn out than to fade away. I’m guessing the SDLP aren’t Neil Young fans. Sinn Féin on the other hand…
We’re nearly twenty years since the end of the armed campaign. I suspect that some combatants would like to see certain issues resolved within their own lifetimes. Is ‘Nationalism’ even a thing in Ireland any more? Politics here can be very confusing, what with all the labels and stuff. Irish Republicanism seems to be the only game in town on this side of the fence. All Sinn Féin have to do is get people out to vote. It’s time to Kick Out the Jams.
Are electoral pacts sectarian? No, I wouldn’t say so. Are the motives behind DUP/UUP’s agreed pact sectarian? You can bet your house on it. The politics of “Keep Them’uns Out” is much more active within Unionism than it ever was in Nationalism, though Nationalism is not Lily White either.
If SF and SDLP did a pact, in say Belfast, and SDLP agreed not to run in North Belfast and SF agreed not to run in South Belfast, that would pretty much guarantee North and South Belfast would have nationalist MP’s, even if the Unionists had a pact in those areas. So 3/4 Belfast MP’s would be Nationalist by May 2015. That says a lot about Belfast’s population and I’m sure many other areas in the 6 counties too.
But the SDLP want to shun any such pact, its obvious they would rather have a Unionist take a seat than a SF representative, so in my opinion have abandoned nationalist voters in the likes of North Belfast to the DUP’s Nigel Dodd’s. I’m sure the nationalist residents find an Orange man MP helpful in their pursuit to a fair resolution to the parading impasse in their area……..
The SDLP have got to get their finger out and start facing reality.
Since Sinn Fein became a legitimate political party as opposed to one political side of an armed grouping , they have been able openly to call a spade a spade. Before that …back in the olden times it was presumed to be seditious, in the extreme, to aspire to a republican agenda openly. Now they are out there in local government…not some underground “terror grouping” , but a legitimate party with an axe to grind. They’ve simply isolated those wildings who didn’t want to go the political way and pushed them to the sidelines.They now have an easily understood agenda and perfectly legitimate agenda , just like their Welsh and Scottish counterparts ,… just as the DUP has theirs. Sinn fein Ultimately wants a united island….not simply a United Ireland…. but only by political means .They want it to be vaguely socialist…whatever the hell that means in the 21st century.
Nobody really knows what the SDLP really wants now ,compared to that , which makes them very difficult to understand for anyone .They appear to be a sort of old -fashioned nationalist conservative party..They might want a united Ireland but not just yet….not too soon as would frighten the horses….nor anytime within our current lifetimes.Well and good, but that doesn’t seem to suit a young generation coming up who are not voting for them in the numbers that they gained thirty years ago.
The fact that they take their seats in London hasn’t helped them to influence the current crop of voters into voting for them in huge numbers and Sinn Fein don’t appear to have been wounded by not going to Westminster and has literally stolen their voters away from them. Sinn Fein voters must see Westminster as an irrelevance to them. They’ve actually grown by not going , after all. So whatever influence going there actually accrues, on the ground back home, is debateable.
The DUP crow about getting more seats in London but it seems the other UK parties would rather they never existed at all . Should the SDLP not simply join the unionists if that was the ultimate way to do most good at Westminster? Like the DUP and the UUP, their policies and their somewhat conservative moral and religious background values are viewed with some suspicion by new , young republican- minded voters.
Nobody really wants a party who are even more right-wing than the most right -wing Tory so Alliance are really the only show in town for anyone with a unionist sensibility and a more modern mindset….anyone who might not be church-going …who might be gay…who might not be a bigot… and who might actually read the odd book and knows that the earth is not actually 6000 years old or flat.Why would anyone who believed this kind of thing be trusted by anyone rational, not to make us all like illiterate fools whilst in a position of power?
I think we all just need to come clean on what we kind of knew already….. The SDLP are a unionist party, always have been and always will be.
Posing as nationalist but doing absolutely noting nationalist and enthusiastically administering British rule in Ireland. Originally created by the British to tame the Catholic natives.
I can’t believe that they have the audacity to think they are taking the moral high ground, coming from a party that sits in a British parliament, giving allegiance to an unelected British queen and her parliament to rule over a country that never invited them nor elected them. At least Sinn Fein abstain which is the more moral thing to do. I hope the SDLP get completely destroyed in May.
“Gerry Fitt was a Brit” la la la laaa ……….
The simple fact of the matter is the SDLP detest the Shinners more than they dislike the Unionists, Alban said he would not take part in any pact as it would be a sectarian carve up, thus by implication admitting the stoops are a Catholic party. As for Gregory, the last time I checked Naomi Long was a regular (admittedly pointless) attendee at Westminster, and she has never said she supports Irish unity. As a tactic I can not criticise the Unionists, they are just defending their people from the horror of having a Catholic/Republican/Nationalist MP.
The best newspaper headline of the 80s appeared in An phoblacht when Fitt was “elevated to the house of lords” .It proclaimed : “Fitts a Brit- its official “!