Opinion

At least this time no head of government turned up to be jilted by the DUP – Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson speaks to the media outside Hillsborough Castle where political parties convened for talks with the British Government (Liam McBurney/Liam McBurney/PA Wire)
By Brian Feeney

It’s an action replay of February 2018 when the DUP walked away from a deal they’d reached with the two governments and Sinn Féin to restore devolution.

The then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British Prime Minister Theresa May arrived at Stormont on Monday February 12 to seal the deal but Arlene Foster stood them up. As Michelle O’Neill said at the time, “We had reached an accommodation with the leadership of the DUP. The DUP failed to close the deal. They have now collapsed this process.” At least this time no head of government turned up to be jilted. Fool me once…

The cause of the collapse in 2018 was that Foster was too weak a leader to convince her party to accept what she’d agreed on an Irish language act. It would be another two years before Stormont was resurrected. We’re in for a long haul again, but only partly because of Donaldson’s weak leadership. It’s also because of his chronic inability to think through the consequences of knee-jerk tactics he adopts.

Launching his ill-advised demonstrations in 2021 meant he mortgaged his political strategy to unionist extremists. He sought their approval rather than trying to lead his party away from them. As a result, he still remains in hock to their unattainable objectives.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson speaks during an anti-Northern Ireland Protocol rally in Ballymoney last year
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson speaks during an anti-protocol rally in Ballymoney last year

That means, despite noises to the contrary, there won’t be assembly elections called after the latest invented deadline of January 18. There’ll be no elections because they’d be elections to nothing except a continuance of the current deadlock with renewed mandates for both SF and the DUP, probably bigger in both cases.

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Think about it. How could Donaldson campaign for assembly elections on any other platform than the one he’s nailed his shirt tail to: ‘No Irish Sea border’? Instead the DUP is hoping the hapless Sunak will call a May election maybe to coincide with the English council elections on May 2. Better to hang together than being hanged separately in May then October.

The DUP hope for a mandate in the British general election to act as a launchpad for negotiations with an incoming Labour government. Good luck with that; the north’s not on Labour’s agenda.

Furthermore, the DUP is vulnerable in at least two and possibly three constituencies. One is Upper Bann. There, the present MP Carla Lockhart recently demonstrated her political genius by moaning how depressing it was to leaflet at a polling booth in a strongly unionist constituency only to discover how few people turned up to vote. Does it ever occur to anyone in the DUP why in some unionist constituencies the majority of unionist voters don’t vote? Criticising the voters for not voting wouldn’t have anything to do with the candidate, would it?

Donaldson mortgaged his political strategy to unionist extremists. He sought their approval rather than trying to lead his party away from them. As a result, he still remains in hock to their unattainable objectives

However, while you twiddle your thumbs waiting for a general election it’s worth reflecting that our current proconsul must share a major part of the blame for the deadlock. He should never have engaged in secret negotiations with the DUP, particularly negotiations in which he misled the DUP into believing he or the British government would be able to deliver what they wanted.

Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris talks to the media at the front of Hillsborough Castle after talks with parties ended this week (Jonathan Porter / Press Eye)

Of course as a former senior figure in Westminster’s wingnuts care home, the ERG, he’s a British sovereignty fetishist and therefore would minimise Irish government involvement. Hunkering down with the DUP was also consistent with this rotten, corrupt Conservative government’s biased and partisan approach to dealing with the north since 2010. At no point did any proconsul ever acknowledge the obligation to treat both communities with ‘rigorous impartiality’ as the Good Friday Agreement stipulates.

This guy’s failed stewardship, which has produced a big fat zero, has flown in the face of all experience, even that which resurrected the executive in 2020. That is, that the only successful negotiations result from inclusion of the Irish government and all parties here.