FOR decades, the DUP’s stock in trade has been to decry rival unionists, branding them as ‘Lundy’ figures and haranguing them for ‘selling out’ whenever they moved in a direction that differed from its peculiar worldview.
Terence O’Neill and Brian Faulkner were on the receiving end of merciless treatment from Ian Paisley and his acolytes. David Trimble, the UUP leader who finally found the political courage to cement power-sharing between unionists and nationalists, was denounced in the most strident terms.
Given that track record it is rather disingenuous for the DUP to now describe the erection of a few posters bearing the blunt message ‘Stop DUP sellout’ as intimidation.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has blamed TUV members for being behind the posters. These have appeared outside DUP constituency offices, including his own. At least some were erected during the hours of darkness.
“I will not be intimidated or distracted by such shadowy behaviour any more than similar behaviour I have faced in the past by republicans,” said Sir Jeffrey. The TUV countered that “posters aren’t intimidation” and that it looked forward to “the warning they contain being heeded”.
Given the volume of tawdry sectarian flags and posters that are a feature of the loyalist marching season, we can perhaps look forward to the DUP complaining about these intimidatory displays when they next appear on our main thoroughfares and public spaces.
Mostly though, petty intra-unionist exchanges of this sort will rightly be regarded as childish nonsense. Just ask the public sector workers taking industrial action over pay or the huge number of people on hospital waiting lists.
The ‘sell-out’ in question is Sir Jeffrey’s readiness to end his Stormont boycott. It says much for the mindset that prevails within sections of unionism and loyalism that it is the prospect of returning to power-sharing that is viewed as the sell-out, and not the disgraceful decision 22 months ago to abandon Stormont itself.
Sir Jeffrey seems to have accepted that a return to Stormont is both inevitable and necessary. But it is also clear he has done a very poor job in preparing not only his own party - where he faces considerable opposition - but also the alliance of fringe and eccentric figures he assembled to challenge the NI Protocol and Windsor Framework.
It is essential that Sir Jeffrey uses the Christmas period to find the courage to finally do the right thing.
