Imagine a very sharp-posted picket fence. Now imagine a very fat man sitting on that fence. You should at this point have a fairly good idea of how the DUP are feeling.
“We had to do something to show our displeasure” Sammy Wilson told the BBC’s Newsnight. What was that something? His party had abstained from voting for the budget, which got through with a majority of five anyway. In other words, the DUP’s abstention had as much impact as a eunuch in a brothel.
It did show the Tory government that the DUP weren’t best pleased with the way Theresa May was going on. At the same time, it didn’t inconvenience the Tory party in any real way.
The fact is, the DUP are impaled on a picket fence of exceeding sharpness. On the one hand they desperately want to hang onto their Confidence and Supply relationship with the Tories. This allows them to tell the people of our Tormented Green Corner (TGC) that they have shown what fools Sinn Féin are for not showing up in the Westminster chamber. That the presence of the DUP in the chamber is making all the difference for our TGC. Except it’s not. That’s one buttock pierced.
The stabbing sensation in the second buttock comes from being at odds with the people in our TGC. The DUP may grit their teeth and pretend it’s not, of course. Here’s Sammy Wilson yesterday doing just that, talking about Theresa May:
“She has broken all of those promises — to the people of the United Kingdom, to her own party and to the people of Northern Ireland.”
Wrong, Sammy. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The UK and the Tory party can decide whether she’s kept her promises to them. But the people of Northern Ireland, aka our TGC, far from feeling promises have been broken, believe Theresa May has delivered as good a deal as the people here could hope for. The DUP believes the exact opposite. Hence the searing pain in the DUP’s second buttock.
Because the party is more painfully aware than any of us that it is pushing a point of view which some two-thirds of the population here think is bone-headed and would, if successful, land us in an economically scorched landscape. What to do?
When both buttocks have a sharp-edged picket post lodged deep in your soft bits, continuing to sit there is very, very painful. But then to attempt to rise would result in bum-pain so fierce and humiliation so public, it seems unthinkable. So the DUP sits on and tries to pretend it’s the party doing the Right Thing for the people in our TGC.
Guys, guys. Clench your teeth and pull clear of those perforating posts. Otherwise you could bleed to death. Ease yourself clear, come home and let us staunch the flow.
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