I wonder does Jeffrey Donaldson have a Dominic Cummings. I mean the Dominic Cummings who once was the go-to man inside the No 10 tent, not the Dominic Cummings who’s presently outside and raining heavy urine on Boris’s tent. If Jeffrey had this benign form of Cummings, you may be sure he’d take pains to prevent his master seeing the latest Lucid Talk poll. “Why am I staring at the Belfast Telegraph with my eyes popping and slightly crossed, Sir Jeffrey? Oh, ah, nothing, just a cross-word… What’s a four- letter-hyphen-two-letter word for a disaster?”
Back in the real world, I suspect Jeffrey will have bowed his head in prayer to his Maker, then opened the Belfast Telegraph with the care and respect of a bomb-defuser. Better the horror you know than the horror you imagine.
And what a horror it is. With the elections just three months away, Lucid Talk has Jeffrey’s party at 17% – down one – with Sinn Féin at 25% – up one. Yes indeed, Jeffrey, an opinion poll is only a bunch of opinions, and yes, the only poll that really counts is the one on voting day. But with opinion poll after opinion poll telling you the same thing – that your party is miles behind and panting madly – maybe have a re-read of the Bible story about Lazarus. Because it’ll take a serious risen-from-the-dead showing for the DUP to resume its place as cock of the Stormont walk.
And don’t anybody try consoling Jeffrey with the fact that he’ll at least be Deputy First Minister after May. The DUP for years has played on unionist fears by painting the role of Deputy First Minister as a fate worse than death. Sinn Féin is a bunch of terrorists/former terrorists/terrorist-sympathisers, and so must at all costs be prevented from assuming the First Minister mantle. The DUP has worked so hard to produce this painted devil, and has done such a good job, their supporters now will feel they’re about to be eased off the edge of the Grand Canyon.
In contrast to Sinn Féin, the SDLP is sitting on 11%, at the bottom of the table, with Jim Allister’s lot at 13% and the UUP and Alliance neck-and-neck at 14%.
That last figure puzzles me a bit – I’ve always thought Naomi Long was a top-drawer talker, whereas Doug Beattie often sounds like a man who’s jumped on a bus and forgotten where he’s supposed to be going.
And isn’t it weird, the way the DUP and the Tory Party mirror each other? Once the DUP leader was Mr Vote-getter, a splendidly in-control figure, always calm, always courteous. Now he’s like a man who’s making little mental leps to avoid the slavering teeth of those in his own party. Which, apart form the courteous bit, is pretty much what Johnson once was and now is.
When people are scared, really scared, it’s striking how often the fear comes jumping out of them as irritability and anger. Brace yourself, Jeffrey. There’s a lot more where that came from.
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