A leadership race which the DUP high and mighty don’t want to be played out in public, or at least they don’t want Edwin Poots and Jeffrey Donaldson debating in public. Now why would that be? One would think the new leader of the DUP would want to garner the emotions and support of the Unionist and Loyalist population of the North. Or would it be that this leadership race is more about saving the DUP as a party than anything else? Would it be because neither candidate can address the NI Protocol? And that will be the big ticket piece Unionism wants to see on the agenda and rectified. There’s no doubt that Arlene Foster’s inability to act on the NI Protocol led, at least in part, to her fall from grace within the DUP, so rapidly she herself didn’t even see it coming. No one did. In fact, I’d say the instigator of this little bloodless insurrection, namely Edwin Poots, didn’t even see things moving so quickly.
On top of all of this, a former UUP MLA, Ross Hussey has been taking pot shots at Sir Jeff on social media. Mr. Hussey said – “I’m still laughing reading this, he leaked like a sieve at every UU Council meeting going out to the press to express his opposition to the agreement. He knows very well how to highlight divisions in public as he did in the UUP. Out of personal dislike I hope he doesn’t get it”. No doubt Mr. Hussey has been reprimanded by his own party for that little snipe at Jeffrey Donaldson, but he has let the cat out of the bag that there are those within the UUP who possess a distinct dislike for Mr. Donaldson and probably Arlene Foster for abandoning his post at the UUP.
The leader of the UUP, Steve Aiken has now resigned. Steve Aiken’s problem was the very same problem that Jim Allister has in the TUV. There is but one person in the UUP who has the limelight on him and who actually ‘matters’ and that person is Robin Swann. Just as the TUV has a single personality at play, that being the Jim Allister. Steve Aiken simply wasn’t right for the UUP leader role. He embodied the persona of ‘Rule Britannia’, being an ex-submarine Commander…but that’s all he had going for him. He had a few disastrous interviews on the radio after throwing the UUP’s weight behind the NI Protocol ‘rebellion’ within Unionism. However, when Stevie boy was challenged on why the UUP and in turn Steve himself gave his support to ant-Protocol protests, Steve couldn’t vocalise it. In fact, he tied himself in so many knots over the questioning and challenging of his reasoning for supporting the anti-Protocol actions, that anyone listening could clearly see he had absolutely no idea what was going on, both in Loyalism and in his own party, nor did he understand why he or his party supported the protests.
Unionism is in total and absolute chaos. It’s almost as if it has arrived at a raging river which it can neither go through or round. Is Ireland, after all these years, finally starting to move on without them? Is Unionism starting to see the stark reality that it is no longer ‘their way or the highway’? The more people look at Northern Irish Unionism, the more they realise it was they who were holding this country back all this time. It wasn’t the politics, it was Unionism fighting to keep what wasn’t theirs, to keep and hold it separate from Mother Ireland and her people.
With the Scottish elections all but won for the SNP, an independence referendum is all but certain. BoJo can’t stop it, no one can. If Scotland has shown us something it is that independence is possible, it is ripe for the picking but we must be in the right place and it must be at the right time. There has been little to no proper planning that the average Paddy on the street here has seen (yes, in the eyes of everyone but Northern Irish Unionism, we are all Paddies).
Before the last Scottish independence referendum, a 670 page document was distributed in Scotland. It outlined everything from pensions to flags to borders and it was extremely comprehensive. Look at that and compare it to the Irish reunification work. We have nothing like that, absolutely nothing…and that’s because we have to wait on a British Secretary of State to tell us when the time is right for a Unity Poll. Something which is going to cause issues, as the Supreme Court has ruled the Secretary of State will not be compelled to outline the criteria for a Border Poll. There is always an excuse. This time it is Covid, and that’s fair enough but Covid didn’t stop Scottish elections, or Welsh elections, so why not set out the criteria which would enable the Secretary of State to call a Border Poll? Because he’s scared he will be the Secretary of State to give away the North-Eastern six Counties of Ireland.
According to the Good Friday Agreement, “If at any time it appears likely that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”, then the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland may order the holding of a poll, but a poll may not be held more than once every seven years, and that’s why we have to get this right first time round.
With Unionist parties like the DUP and UUP haemorrhaging votes to the Alliance party and the TUV, now would be a good time to start engaging with these parties, more so the Alliance Party as Jim Allister would refuse to talk to you if your name so much as sounded like Paddy. The problem with Alliance is, they like the status quo, believe it or not. They like Unionists and Republicans being in the Executive because they can sit back in safety and watch the discontent at the running of the Executive while sponging up those votes. They can’t talk about a border poll because it would upset the small ‘u’ Unionists who migrated to their party from the DUP and UUP, which leaves them with their default line always being – “There is no current case for a united Ireland Border Poll” – Stephen Farry, Alliance Deputy Leader at the party’s 50th anniversary annual conference in 2020. Yes, 2020 when the case for a Border Poll was greater than it had ever been, that’s what the Alliance Party came off with.
So we have Unionism, both political and grass roots in turmoil, Alliance packed with small ‘u’ Unionists unable to actually be a centrist party they say they are and the SDLP, well, Colum Eastwood appears from…somewhere, when he thinks there are political points to be scored by attacking Sinn Fein and the DUP, then skulks away until the next time (talk about guerrilla warfare, eh?). He has neither stopped Brexit nor achieved much else while in Westminster, essentially breaking all the promises he made to get into Westminster leaving many people disgruntled, especially when he rowed in behind the DUP’s lead on the Storey funeral.
Is it better to wait until Unionism has stabilised or strike while the iron is hot? As the old adage, first recorded in 1562 states…There’s no time like the present.
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