Sometimes it’s hard being a unionist

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman, and these days, nearly all the time, it’s harder to be a unionist. No matter what way they turn, what pose they strike, the consequences seem to be disastrous.

The coming election is a fine example. The tag of arrogance was hung round the DUP neck during the recent Assembly elections and the result was a near-disaster – no less than seven seats yanked out from beneath DUP behinds. So clearly the thing for the DUP to do in this coming election is not to sound arrogant. Right?

Well yes, except that it’s near-impossible to act tolerant when you’re feeling very, very jittery. Just as the German spy with the lovely English accent used to give himself away when a sash window fell on his fingers and he shouted “Achtung!”, so a sudden noise, an unexpected movement is enough to send unionist politicians into a tailspin, with all efforts at tolerance stripped away.

Gavin Robinson modeled the style on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme two days ago, announcing he was quite relaxed, he’d take East Belfast, pact or no pact. Arlene showed it yesterday when she told the UUP that really, you know, the DUP are the only unionist party that can win South Belfast. Oh, and thanks for handing us those other two constituencies – nice gesture. Suckers.

And of course there’s open season on the abstentionist Shinners. Good heavens – what’s the point in you people going on about opposing Brexit when you won’t go into the debating chamber of the House of Commons? Tsk, tsk.

Every time that kind of nose-holding posture is struck, another hundred or two nationalists shake their fists and promise another day of reckoning at the polling station for haughty unionist disdain.

Unionists do have an alternative strategy. This would involve not getting clad in sackcloth and ashes – just following the line of the good Captain Terence O’Neill, who wanted unionists to encourage Catholics to live like them and, of course, vote like them. Unfortunately for the captain, his convent-hopping mission ended in disaster, with Ian Paisley blocking the creation of Catholic unionists. There’s no big Ian to incite block overtures now, but the unionist electorate have been chivvied into a sectarian corral so often by their politicians, they simply wouldn’t recognize a candidate who said s/he was a unionist who wanted to work on equal terms with the SDLP and the Shinners. If you keep calling “Crocodile!” for decades, you can’t be surprised if no one hears you should you whisper “Reconciliation”.

The unionist electorate has been so used to not-an-inchery down the decades, it’d assume their politicians had given up and/or gone mad if they started sounding reasonable. So yet more arrogance is served to unionist voters, and nationalist/republicans drum their fingers and wait for pay-back on June 8.

There is only one way for unionism to survive, let alone flourish, and that’s to take the Captain Terence O’Neill route of chatting up nuns and wooing nationalists to be happy UK citizens.

Alas, events overtook the good Captain: Paisley blocked the way towards teaching Catholics to live (and vote) like Protestants. Fifty years later, the wind has changed and political unionism has been caught with its contemptuous face on display, and it looks like it’ll stay that way for keeps.

In which case, farewell Fermanagh/South Tyrone and farewell to who knows how many other seats. Brexit and arrogance: a toxic mixture.

Wasn’t one of Big Ian’s favourite texts “Ye shall reap what ye sow”? You didn’t know the half of it, Ian.