A US expert has said that Trump’s vice president, who has Ulster-Scots roots, is unlikely to make a big difference to the unionist cause in Washington, saying that it ‘remains something of a fantasy’.
It follows remarks by DUP minister Gordon Lyon last week that JD Vance in office is “good from Northern Ireland’s point of view”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, the communities minister noted that the Ohio senator “has been very proud of what he would call his Scots-Irish roots”.
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“I think that, again, is an opportunity for us and that’s what I care about – promoting Northern Ireland, getting Northern Ireland out there. I want to highlight that,” he said.
Mr Lyons was being quizzed about his recent trip to North America during his appearance, which was revealed by The Irish News to have cost the public purse more than £40,000.
He told the Nolan programme that he had managed to secure a role for Northern Ireland in the 250th anniversary celebrations of America’s independence, highlighting the historical links between immigrants from the north to the early US and their contributions to the country’s establishment.
“Perhaps we can use his time in office to highlight those issues,” he said.
However, US-Ireland expert Liam Kennedy, Director of the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, says that any change in the unionist position in Washington thanks to Vance is unlikely.
“I think it remains something of a fantasy,” he said.
“Vance, to my knowledge, has shown very little interest in Northern Ireland.
“Just because he chooses to identity as Ulster-Scots doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly going to embrace a unionist point of view on the north – that doesn’t compute for me.
“That’s the fantasy, I suppose, for some unionists.”
Mr Kennedy points to what he describes as “unionists’ failure to engage Washington over the years,” when compared to their nationalist counterparts.
“That’s been maybe a sore point to some degree,” he said.
“Can they turn that around with Vance? I have my doubts because it’ll take a lot more than Vance to turn that appreciation of unionist outreach around – you’ve got a lot more people involved than that.
“So, I’d be very surprised.”
While the Professor of American Studies acknowledged that Vance being in office does present some new opportunities for unionists, diplomats in the Republic will also be reaching out to the new administration.
“They’re putting themselves out to Republicans because they have to get to know them, they have to work with them,” he said.
“So, they’ll be putting their own foot forward with Vance as well.”
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Mr Kennedy said that while the story of Ulster-Scots immigrants to America is a“fascinating history” which “we should know more about”, he believes JD Vance uses his Scots-Irish identity it to relate to a Trump-friendly support base.
“Vance’s references to Ulster-Scots is kind of like a code; it’s almost a dog whistle in the US,” he said.
“When you look at when he makes his most famous reference to it, it appears in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, and basically, he uses it as a way of saying that he is not a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant)”.
“I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree,” JD Vance writes in his autobiography.
“To these folks, poverty is the family tradition - their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and mill workers during more recent times.”
