You know the Specsavers ad that’s been adapted to address the hard of hearing? I’m not wondering if anyone in the DUP has seen it – they clearly haven’t. I’m wondering if we should just club together and send them the Specsavers hearing aid for Christmas. Maybe even ten of them (yes, Ian, we haven’t forgotten you) and an extra one with a little crown carved on it for Arlene.
I say this because if the DUP and unionism generally had listened to what was said, we might not be in the present mess we’re in…Yes, Virginia, we might be in a different mess but that’s hypothetical. Let’s deal with the liquid manure in which unionism is currently chin-high.
When Martin McGuinness was confronted with the Irisgate affair, he told Peter Robinson that he’d support him in any way he could. Despite Peter doing the most gawdawful schmaltzy TV address, Martin was true to his word and Robinson survived. Score one point for a case where a unionist leader listened to a republican leader.
When Martin McGuinness was confronted with the RHI scandal, he urged Arlene Foster to take a week or two over Christmas to think about the need for her to step aside as First Minister for a few weeks until the matter had received some further investigations. Arlene acted as if she’d suddenly gone stone deaf, and as a result the RHI inquiry has been giving DUP ministers and SPADs the roasting of their lives, and our Tormented Green Corner (TGC) has been without an operating Executive ever since (and, some say, may never have one again).
The latest example of DUP hearing loss was many months ago, when the DUP, scarcely able to believe what it thought of as its luck, leaped into bed with the Tory party. You want confidence and supply, Theresa? We’re exactly what you’re looking for. Amid all the whooping and hollering from unionism, a voice of dissent could be heard. It belonged to Gerry Adams and he advised that this unholy union could end only one way, and that was in tears.
What is the DUP now doing? Weeping into its pillow. How could Theresa May have done this to them, after all they’d done for her. How could she have agreed to an EU pact which had different terms (different and advantageous, actually) from the rest of the UK? No good to tell the DUP that the constitutional position here will change only when a majority of people so decide. (No, Virginia, not a unionist majority. A majority of people. No one wants it but 50% + 1 would do. It’s called democracy.) But as I say, useless trying to console the DUP with that point. The British Tories have betrayed them, just as they did their forefathers nearly one hundred years ago.
I know thorough-going Christians like the good knight Sir Jeffrey would be horrified, but the Gregorian chant puts it rather well:
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeculum in favilla
Teste David cum Sybilla
–Day of wrath and doom impending,
David’s word with Sibyl’s blending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending.
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