It’ll come as no surprise that the DUP are now being undemocratic in their stance on taking the DFM role in Stormont. I desperately want to label them the Undemocratic Unionist Party, but that would be unfair to the UUP.
Everyone knew this was going to happen, Sinn Fein was going to become the largest party in the northern state and the DUP would refuse to enter the Executive unless the Protocol was substantially changed or scrapped altogether. With Sir Jeff’s mathematics and data on the issue coming from a study carried out by none other than a DUP-led department to support claims about the NI Protocol during the debate, it didn’t take a genius to realise the DUP and indeed Unionism as a whole were grasping at straws in an effort to make the Protocol the big-ticket elephant in the room with other parties.
“Customs checks doesn’t mean that you change the constitutional status of a part of the United Kingdom.” – DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson of customs checks on 3rd March 2020.
The problem the DUP had was that they continued to concentrate solely on the NI Protocol while the cost of living continued to rise along with the price of everything else while wages stood still and everyone knew, while Unionism attempted to claim it was thanks to the Protocol, it most certainly was not. The DUP are under an immense amount of pressure not only from the USA, the Southern Irish Government, the British Government, the EU…even Scotland weighed in but also every other party in the North including some within their own ranks, to get back into the Executive, ratify a nationalist First Minister and get on with it.
However, Jeffrey Donaldson is waiting, as Unionism has done for decades, for the British Government or Liz Truss to ride in and dispose of the Protocol even though a British court of law has ruled the NI Protocol does not contravene the GFA or the North’s place within the United Kingdom. The DUP helped negotiate this, they quite literally have their fingerprints all over the NI Protocol and yet they dare to blame everyone but themselves for the mess they have caused. Basically, Sir Jeff has backed himself and the DUP into a corner, and now he can’t find a way out other than to go ‘full nuclear’ and refuse to go into the Executive unless the Protocol is dealt with – essentially looking at every other voter in the eye and dictating their votes don’t count unless Unionism says so. But that’s not how democracy works, again something Northern Irish Unionism isn’t used to, having held a gerrymandered majority for 101 years.
On social media and media publications, it has been stark, the message emanating from posts on the DUP refusing to ratify the Executive. The message is ‘Get back to work’ and I’m seeing that even from Unionists.
The big message is this – every party other than the TUV and the DUP want back into Stormont to get to work, Protocol or no Protocol. There’s a new freshness, a vibrancy about it that wasn’t there in past years when the DUP held the top seat because it was always the same old same old. Now there is a majority of parties who want to work for all the people of this, as of late, failed little state. I personally am on record as being of the impression that the DUP was the problem, the thorn in the side of the Executive and Assembly as a whole, stifling it from working to its full potential.
Let’s see how it goes with the majority of parties seeking to make things work, rather than constantly saying ‘Never, never, never’.
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