After a period of careful training with her husband Nigel, Diane Dodds has stepped up and smashed the backstop ball past Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and Theresa May (political football allows as many goalkeepers as you want – the rules are very loose) and into the net. Hoooray!
Afterwards, Diane explained her reason for kicking the backstop ball into the net, through the net and out of the park.
“The backstop solution for Northern Ireland as set out in the protocol is wholly unacceptable…A solution that sees …goods and services as being from a third country and therefore subject to customs checks is a totally unwarranted interference.”
Correct me if I’m hallucinating, but didn’t Theresa May, as prime minister of the UK, agree to a backstop solution in the event of other, more acceptable arrangements being agreed? That’s the UK to which Diane and her husband and the DUP in general protest their undying allegiance. Oddly, there is no reference in Diane’s statement as to the views of the rest of the UK. It’s simply that we, the DUP, will not accept the backstop solution, where the British border in Ireland continues to be invisible.
This stirs two weary memories from sleep at the back of my head. The first is, of course, the Ulster Covenant, when the unionist leaders made it clear that they were so loyal to the UK, if the UK tried to give Ireland even a tightly-limited Home Rule, unionism would fight it tooth and claw. Democracy? Forget democracy.
The second eye-rubbing memory to rouse itself is in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum. As every feeble-minded pup in the kennels knows by now, there was a marked divergence in the expressed wishes of our own dear NEN and that of the UK as a whole. We voted 56% that we wanted to remain in the EU, but the DUP and other unionists quickly pointed out that our wishes didn’t matter, this was something which the whole UK decided, and it had decided we were leaving the EU, so leaving it we are.
Am I the only one who sees a yawning gap between consistency and the various stances taken by unionism? We must leave because the UK as a whole decided we must; we must not allow a backstop, even though the prime minister of the UK has agreed to the backstop solution months ago. We don’t care – there will be no backstop, no matter what anyone in the UK wants.
What this comes down to is the DUP acting as it wishes. Reason? Logic? Fancy words, with no relevance to real life. We are so British, we’ll tell the rest of the UK as well as the rest of Ireland how it’s all gonna be.
The DUP has had UK-wide image problems from the first day it extorted from the British Exchequer £1 billion (never mind your where-is-it, Virginia – it’s resting in the DUP account) . After this latest tantrum, the already frayed nerves of the UK electorate are at snapping point. If Theresa May doesn’t tell the DUP where to put their veto, she’s a goner, Now hands up, all who think Jeremy Corbyn will make a more accommodating PM for the DUP? …No, Virginia, I wasn’t looking out the window so I can’t say for sure if that was a tumbleweed just bounced past.
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