Former British Prime Minister Theresa May didn't get much right as a politician. By the time she became PM, the leadership of the Tory party was a choice between the mediocre and egotistical.
There have only been a handful of great prime ministers since 1914. A few more were underrated whilst in office but Mrs May was an abject failure.
To be fair, in the league table of recent prime ministers she is only the third worst. When compared to the breathtaking dishonesty of the Johnson administration and the staggering stupidity of the short-lived Truss government, May’s decency allows her some decorum amongst a stable of the inept and clueless.
In exercising political judgment she made two good decisions.
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The first was to vote Remain. The second was to negotiate most of the Withdrawal Agreement and the backstop with the EU. She was a pragmatist.
Amongst her greatest failures were overestimating her own popularity with the electorate, appointing the duplicitous Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, and allowing herself to be heckled and harassed by the braying donkeys of the DUP at Westminster.
The relentless intransigence of the DUP contributed to the demise of the May premiership. Unfortunately for the DUP it was a pyrrhic victory.
No Tory, not even those die-hard Brexiteers at Westminster, ever forgot the disrespectful haranguing of Mrs May by Sammy Wilson. To them it was disrespectful to the office of prime minister.
In her autobiography, it’s clear Mrs May – a committed unionist – has neither forgotten nor forgiven the DUP.
Now the DUP feels the cold winds of isolation.
Ahead of a likely calamitous general election, no Tory is going out on a limb to save DUP blushes. A deal to see the restoration of Stormont has been pre-cooked – a legislative group hug is on the way.
The DUP, never a party to miss the opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, risks not only the possibility of losing a few parliamentary seats but political credibility too.
One doubts that Jeffrey Donaldson knows much about poker. But his doppelgänger from Donegal sings a song which should serve as a stark reminder that it’s time to read the faces of those around the room. The lyrics are apt: “ Every gambler knows / That the secret to survivin’ / Is knowin’ what to throw away / And knowin’ what to keep.”
Donaldson knows the Windsor Framework isn’t work in progress. It’s a done deal. He won concessions and needs to remind his critics of that.
And if he doesn’t know what to throw away, the NIO minister Steve Baker spelt it out very clearly in Westminster – the politically bankrupt DUP refuseniks at parliament and those shrill external voices on the extremes of loyalism.
In realpolitik, not only does the world move on but the political arithmetic at Westminster will soon change. Holding out for a Labour government would be a strategic mistake by the DUP. A Labour administration is more likely to build on the existing structures of the Good Friday Agreement which affect Anglo-Irish and north-south relationships.
Leadership is all about leading. The loyalists trying to ham-shackle the DUP have no solutions – only linguistically strangulated sound bites. Instinctively Donaldson and the more economically literate in the DUP know this.
Sir Jeffrey and his progressive (a loose definition, I know) colleagues have an opportunity to secure the future of Northern Ireland as part of the UK by making it economically successful. The Windsor Framework provides them with a basis for optimism.
Should they miss this opportunity, a united Ireland becomes much more than a distant aspiration. A Stormont in a perpetual state of decay will create a confidence crisis in the very purpose of Northern Ireland.
To quote science fiction author Arthur C Clarke: “The best proof of intelligent life in outer space is the fact that it has never come here.”
