Newspeak was the official language of Oceania in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. One of Oceania’s slogans was “War is Peace.”Currently there are a number of problems facing the Chuckle Coalition up on the hill. The devolution of policing and justice, demanded by SF, but rejected for the moment by Paisley and various other DUPers. The debacle of the Dromore by election and the apparent concern in some DUP circles about the chuckling added to the demise of Paisley junior and the mutterings about Paisley senior’s political if not actual survival all make the current situation rather more frosty. Some SF members may also be getting a bit annoyed; who knows?
What might help calm the situation, however, would be a good row between the DUP and SF. This might help settle everyone’s nerves and provide a good cathartic bigot before getting back to the serious business of sailing the Flying Dutchman.
I would be too much of a conspiracy theorist to suggest the DUP and SF might actually have had some degree of coordination in the row precipitated by McCann with her plan to celebrate the IRA “martyr” Farrell, McGuinness’s comments about killing British soldiers and the DUP reaction to both these events. However, Belfast Gonzo has already suggested that this could be the new collusion. To bring us back to the start of the blog: even if it is not as coordinated as that, it is true that a good verbal war might help to bring internal peace especially for the DUP. I suspect the SF leadership are clever enough to know that they are helping the DUP a great deal at the moment. The question is: What will they want in return? And will they get it?
This author has not written a biography and will not be writing one.
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
