Amid the chaos, fear and loathing displayed this week in the rotten Conservative government, few people here, or indeed anywhere else, noticed the DUP MPs continued to behave in their usual undemocratic fashion.
So consistent are they in this behaviour, the party should be called the Undemocratic Unionist Party. Then again perhaps not, for how could you distinguish it from all the other unionist parties which have denied democracy in Ireland for over a century?
However, back to the matter in hand. On Tuesday night the DUP supported an amendment to the deplorable Rwanda bill the notorious Brextremist Sir Bill Cash proposed. The eight DUP MPs joined 60 far-right Conservative MPs voting to free the UK government from being bound by the European Convention on Human Rights when deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. This amendment was the most extreme the Conservative wing nuts proposed. It would have broken international law if implemented and ended with the UK joining Russia and Belarus outside the ECHR.
You might notice here that there is the small matter of the Good Friday Agreement’s bedrock being the ECHR guaranteeing people’s rights here, a guarantee repeated in the Trade & Cooperation Agreement the UK made with the EU when it exited. There are also the important facts that the majority of people in Ireland supported the GFA in referendums and that in 2016 a majority of people in the north voted against Brexit.
Yet there we were on Tuesday with the DUP, as ever strangers to democracy, voting against the expressed wishes of the majority of people in both parts of Ireland. Needless to say their support for this extremist amendment counted for nothing. The DUP and their fellow extremists were defeated 529-68.
Still, never say die. The DUP then went on to propose their own amendment which said, “The provisions of this Act shall have effect in Northern Ireland.” It doesn’t, because in the north EU law, including ECHR decisions, overrides UK law.
Once again the DUP attempted to subvert democracy here, yet this same party now talks about its support for the GFA, trying to invent new ‘foundations’ for the Agreement that give it a Stormont veto despite having opposed the GFA for 25 years. Irrational or what?
The party should be called the Undemocratic Unionist Party. Then again perhaps not, for how could you distinguish it from all the other unionist parties which have denied democracy in Ireland for over a century?
The ostensible reason the DUP put forward their amendment is because they claim that, according to Sammy Wilson, the north risks “becoming a safe haven for mass immigration” due to the protocol. Yeah, right. Wilson also claims the EU’s charter of fundamental rights, which still applies here, “is going to make Northern Ireland a magnet for people who may find that the route to stay in the United Kingdom is blocked”.
How would any of that work? It seems the DUP, like their far right wing friends, believe asylum seekers and migrants would pour in from the south, some hoping to go on to England but if they failed, staying here. Obviously they’d forsake the south where they have higher benefits, can find work and speak English. They’d rush to England where they’re forbidden to work and live on a pittance. Simples. Strangely, the 100,000 Ukrainians who arrived in the south haven’t done that.
Of course the DUP’s solution to the problem they’ve invented is, as ever, to fortify the British border in Ireland. They should be careful what they wish for. There’ll be no border checkpoints, but by flagging up the prospect of the north becoming a ‘migrant magnet’ the DUP has alarmed their right wing pals who don’t give a damn who, or how many, come to the north. What they do care about is who, and how many, come to England.
When new Electronic Travel Authorisation comes in – for some countries on February 24 – you can bet your bottom dollar the British will start to check people arriving from the north. There’s you thinking the DUP was against an Irish Sea border.