Gavin Robinson falls in love with Drumcree

I would not like to be in Gavin Robinson’s shoes,and not just because they’d be at least three sizes too big for me.Robinson is the DUP leader (please don’t bring up the last DUP leader) and can hear the tolling of the election bell next May. The one thing he must do is take people’s minds of the ramshackle,  gouge and elbow state that unionism is currently in. Because if he doesn’t, the May elections could leave a tattered remnant of the once mighty political force led by Ian Paisley.

When the polls are pointing down, down, down,  you must find a way to get your followers thinking of something different. Thatcher did it – she was in a perilous state in the polls, but then Argentina gave her an open goal and. she sent  British troops to save a part of Britain. OK,  the Malvinas are very far away from. what we think of as Britain, but Thatcher managed to convince the British people that Argentina was a bully and British troops (Hurrah!) reclaimed the Malvinas and Maggie had totally refocused British minds from doings at home to doings far away, and success had been snatched from the teeth of failure. 

The American president, besides appearing insane at times, is doing a foreign-policy disstraction too. His ratings are some metres underwater. Americans are struggling to put a crust on the family table,and the man who promised them transformed lives is feeling the heat on his collar. So he attacks  Iran. That’ll do nicely – decapitate the leader in Iran along with his circle of advisors, and that should lead the way for a regime change. Alas, it doesn’t appear to be working. Iran has a choke-hold on the American economy, and oil prices and every other prices is going haywire. The man who promised no more Forever Wars has got the US in a God-knows-how-long war and at the same time has made a mighty fuck-up of things domestic.

Ian Paisley used warn his people about the perils of the  Whore of Bablyon (the Pope, Virginia, the Pope).  Gavin Robinson has resurrected that coughing old ghost, the Garvaghy Road, and made the Orange need to march down it seem the most reasonable of requests.  How so? Well, the Parades Commission have been overruled by the High Court about blocking Orangemen from marching down the Garvaghy Road .  They ‘ve been delivering the same blocking verdict so long, it’s little wonder they’ve got the wording wrong this time. Yes indeed, Virginia – if you said the word ‘Orange’ often enough, it begins to sound weird and even meaningless.)  Robinson has jumped in with both size16s and called for the Board to be sacked.  As the cartoon doing the rounnds puts it, the ghost of Jeffrey Donaldson is seen waving frantically and urging unionists: “Don’t think about me – think about Garvaghy!” If that culture war can be re-inflamed, maybe unionism will show some of the fire-in-the-belly that unionists showed. back in the good old days of Billy Wright. You remember Billy Write> OK, he’s dead , but we must honour his memory and show those dopey fenians that , despite appearances, we still rule the roost,

            Never waste a good crisis, as the man said. The only thing Gavin has forgotten is how Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road back. in the day goaded nationalists/ republicans as much or more than it did unionists. And it didn’t end well, did it? Try something else. Find a tricolour on Rathlin Island and send in a couple of the still-thriving loyalist paramilitaries to take it. down. That should do the trick.