Well, you’ve got to admire his industry. We are told one of the problems with the economy is sluggish productivity. But you cannot lay that accusation at the door of Jeffrey Donaldson.
He’s been digging himself into a hole for years, and the wee man just can’t stop digging. We know he’s still at it, because you can see the pile of dirt on the surface, and from time to time his falsetto rises from the depths.
Donaldson has been digging so long, he must be about to come out on the other side of the world. The people of Papatowai, Belfast’s antipodal city, are in for a treat when he emerges from his hole, dusts himself down, dons his Orange sash and does the haka.
Inside his tunnel, Donaldson has created his own virtual reality world – tunnel vision, if you like. In this world, the DUP is still the dominant force in our politics, able to dictate the political direction of Northern Ireland, able to tell prime ministers what they can and cannot do, able to enforce partition and thwart the machinations of the EU.
The voices inside his head are the voices which once subjugated this place: loyalist paramilitaries who continue to terrorise their own communities, and threaten others; the loyal orders with their sectarianism cloaked in mumbo-jumbo about civil and religious liberty for all; and the unelected and unelectable who pump out bile on the airwaves on a daily basis.
Sadly there doesn’t seem to be anyone willing or able to take him to one side and tell him the game is up.
The DUP may not have moved on. But the country has. Profound changes in demographics are making their presence felt. Northern Ireland may have been established as a gerrymandered Protestant statelet, but it is that no more. It’s not just that Catholics now are in the majority, it’s also the fact that many from a Protestant and unionist background – particularly the younger generation – want to move on from bully-boy politics.
This electorate is out of sympathy too with the deep social conservatism expressed by DUP politicians incapable of separating their fundamentalist beliefs from their responsibility to protect the rights of all. The DUP would make second-class citizens of nationalists, women, people from the LGBTQ+ community, and those of us who believe that dinosaurs walked the earth 100 million years ago.
Donaldson was at it again this week. From the depths of his pit came more guff about the Framework and the path to a restored power-sharing executive at Stormont.
He was speaking at the launch of a naïve report on the Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework from the Centre for Brexit Policy. This is a self-appointed think tank comprised of delusional Brexiteers who propose simplistic solutions to complex problems.
Backing the report, Donaldson said: “We have put forward proposals to the government that are designed to address our continuing concerns about key elements of the Windsor Framework… blah, blah, blah.”
The drift of the report is well summed up in the headline of its press release. “The Windsor Framework has failed – ending NI problems requires moving trade border back to Irish mainland.”
The DUP fix is to do what it always wanted to do. Stick a border round the six counties, and pretend the Good Friday Agreement never existed.
As Superintendent Ted Hastings might say: “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey.”
What Donaldson ignores is that the Windsor Framework has been endorsed by an overwhelming number of MPs in the parliament he calls sovereign. It resolves the tangled mess resulting from his party’s support for a hard Brexit; and it puts the UK in a much better position to mitigate the damage done to its economy by this reckless and foolhardy act of national self-harm.
Donaldson believes in the United Kingdom only when it suits him.
That is something the Secretary of State would do well to think about as he considers how to chart a way forward. Yes he wants the DUP back in the Executive, yes he wants local politicians making tough decisions about health, education and the economy, yes he wants political stability, and all that flows from it. We all do.
But that should not be at the price of kow-towing to a failed political party that is in denial about its waning political clout, and is increasing distanced from the mass of people in these islands. Donaldson doesn’t deserve a ladder, he needs to climb out of the hole by himself.
