‘Brexit is being used to destroy peace in Northern Ireland. Don’t let them do it’
Today all of Westminster is waiting, knuckle in mouth, for a pronouncement on whether Rishi Sunak has made a deal that could solve the problems caused by Brexit in Northern Ireland.
What he has NOT done is solve the problems caused by a small number of idiots who are so stubborn, argumentative and set on self-harm they look like dodos having a post-pub punch-up with lemmings.
The Democratic Unionist Party will decide whether Sunak’s new deal with the EU will stand or fall; and whether they like it or not, they seem determined to use it to destroy a peace they never wanted in the first place.
(
Charles McQuillan)
It was the DUP which campaigned against the Good Friday Agreement, that finally brought peace after decades of war, when it was signed in 1998.
It was the DUP which fought hard for Brexit, in the full knowledge that it was incompatible with the peace deal.
And it is the DUP which has set out ‘red lines’ for any changes, which if observed would break international law, alienate the US, and no Prime Minister could ever obey.
They and their Tory allies aren’t doing that because it’s in Northern Ireland’s best interests. There is next to zero support for it among voters. The DUP doesn’t care about restarting the Troubles, because it gives them a reason to exist.
(
AP)
The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is one which no-one is allowed to control. There must, by law, be no checkpoints, no restriction on movement, and no border guards. It is that porous, imaginary compromise which enabled Republicans and Unionists alike to sign up to it, on the basis that they remained part of the UK but could pretend they were one with Ireland.
That concept won two referendums, changed the constitution of the Republic of Ireland, and enabled Unionists and Republicans not only to share power in the province, but for their children to go to the same schools, communities to rebuild, and enmities to be put aside.
Only Tony Blair could have come up with something so slippery, and it worked. Until Brexit threw it into question, the terrorists who had become gangsters turned their attention to politics again, and people like the journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot while covering riots during the ensuing turmoil, found themselves on a new frontline.
Because it was Blair’s idea, Tories hated it. Because it involved compromise, the most pig-headed rejected it. And because it led to peace, the people whose votes depended on a divided, angry population thought it was bad news.
In 1998, a young politician called Jeffrey Donaldson walked out of the peace talks, saying he’d never share power with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Republican cause. Five years later, after trying and failing to win a leadership contest, he left the unionist party which supported the deal, and joined the DUP which did not.
He took with him another young politician called Arlene Foster. As DUP leader in 2017 she promised to back Prime Minister Theresa May and 2 years later collapsed her government, over a Brexit deal which would have meant that border stayed invisible, and the UK could enjoy the benefits of the EU’s single market.
Today Donaldson is DUP leader, and is still refusing to share power with Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, still threatening to back or collapse a government, and still demanding a Brexit that would not only damage the UK as a whole but is highly likely to divide Northern Ireland again.
(
PA)
That anyone who witnessed the Troubles is prepared to run even a tiny risk of restarting them is astonishing, but there is no alternative conclusion to draw from the DUP’s determination to enforce a border which hasn’t really existed for 25 years.
The DUP is not about to let the fact they got 70,000 fewer votes than Sinn Fein stop them controlling Northern Ireland. Nor is it going to stop controlling the direction of the entire UK, even though their votes account for just 0.2% of our total population. At home they are losing out to Centrists and madder wingnuts, so the DUP stays relevant by being a spanner in everyone’s works.
In April, it’s the anniversary of the agreement that led to that invisible border and ended the war. US President Joe Biden wants to visit, and celebrate what his predecessor Bill Clinton helped to create. Sunak needs his new deal signed off because he wants to be seen as the same sort of slick genius as Blair, and most in his party want to say they cemented the peace.
But former PM Boris Johnson says “f*** the Americans”. Bumptious backbenchers are briefing they’ll rebel against a vote, and the DUP wants to pretend they have a right to be in charge, despite the fact they don’t. They complain the King is being “used” to support the deal, when they were all quite happy to use the late Queen to unlawfully close Parliament and its discussion of Brexit..
As with so much in life, this row is a demand for validation by people who couldn’t validate a library card. They are not adornments to national life so much as a dingleberry on its arse, clinging stubbornly on even when everyone wants rid.
Brexit was always a silly idea, but it was doable with goodwill, compromise, and a lack of ego. The DUP and their Tory fans have never managed the first two and have no concept of the third. They cannot stand that the only reason Sunak has spent so much time and effort on a fresh deal is because he wants to be better friends with Biden, and not them.
It suits them for the Northern Irish border to be marked by barbed wire again, for ‘them and us’ to make a comeback, and their votes to be guaranteed, depending on which street you live in. They don’t see that a return to those days would be firmly laid at their door, and that a quarter of a century of peace has a value far greater than their long record of destroying whatever they can’t understand.