In and out and gates and rogues

Are the DUP and the UUP rogue political parties? After yesterday, there’s a case to be made that both are. Assuming that ‘rogue’ means acting with no regard for the law.  This shows in a number of ways. Take the killing of Jock Davison and Kevin McGuigan. Both these were brutal, violent acts – but while McGuigan’s death received fierce unionist attention, Davison’s was virtually ignored. That’s a rather selective way to be concerned about the breaches of the law both killings present.

Another example of dismissal of the law. The DUP and the UUP were galvanised into action – that is, quitting the Assembly – sort of – by the arrest of Bobby Storey and two other leading republicans. They didn’t wait to see if charges were brought or if the men were proven guilty. The arrests themselves were quite sufficient for the DUP to withdraw from the Executive. The fact that the arrests were made on the basis of no evidence is made clear by the fact that all three have now been released. Has this impacted on the DUP’s attitude? Not a whit. Arlene Foster was on the BBC’s The View last night and she essentially said that the fact that the men were arrested was sufficient grounds for the DUP drawing its skirts up around it and withdrawing from the room. Not guilt, not evidence – simply arrest. Once again, the DUP shows no respect for the obvious decision by the police that these men have no case to answer because there’s no evidence against them. Arlene also managed to project herself as a sort of Boadicea at the gate, warding off the rogues and renegades in Sinn Féin/SDLP ranks who might seek to harm the northern state in general and unionists in particular. It’s called the laager mentality.

We’ll pass lightly over Michael Nesbitt’s, um, odd behaviour and answers on The View and look at the genesis of this whole affair: the comments of the Chief Constable. It is from his words that this entire crisis has grown. So what did he say? That the IRA was now an entirely peaceful organisation, seeking to achieve its ends by political rather than violent means. He went on to say (was this his idea of balance?) that members of the IRA had killed Kevin McGuigan. The DUP and the UUP grabbed the second statement and totally ignored the first, since it wasn’t to their electioneering advantage. So we’re all in the political mess we are because the Chief Constable contradicted himself and unionist politicians seized on the part of the contradiction they liked and triggered the clusterfuck that is now Stormont. 

You may ask why a Chief Constable would issue such an irrational statement. Either he knew how it would be seized on by unionist political parties, in which case he is culpable for issuing it – without, as I say, any evidence of its truth. Or else he didn’t realise how it would be seized on, in which case he is the first Chief Constable here in decades not to be well-tuned to the sensitivities of the unionist parties.

Finally, two communications I received yesterday. One concerned the Chief Constable’s claim that members of the IRA killed Kevin McGuigan. Pointing to the fact that unionist politicians were seeking to punish Sinn Féin for this action,  my correspondent recalled how an attempt was made by the British Army to kill Eddie Copeland (one, incidentally, of the three men arrested and then released yesterday). Shouldn’t the British Army and the British government be punished for this attempted killing?

The second communication pointed out that today, the British House of Commons debates a bill  about assisted suicide. “For ninety-four years now this has proved to be a failed state. Isn’t it time to switch off the Six Counties’ life-support?”