Last Call for Jeffrey? Step up and play.

Over the course of 2023 I had 4 pieces published by Slugger on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. To recap, my line on all 3 was that he needed to face down the old Paisleyites in the DUP by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. I seriously hope this is the last one, not least because I’d prefer to focus on whether or not a reconvened Executive proved to me any good. I have my doubts but I’d be happy to be surprised.

I want to approach it differently this time. I want to focus on the people allegedly putting obstacles in Jeffrey’s way. Its important that our unionist community and electorate are fully aware of the damage these people have done to our standing and our position over the past decade (not to mention the 40 years that preceded). Because this group of largely pension aged men – whose political pensions are secure from both Westminster and Stormont –  have never made a single contribution to strengthening the position of unionists in Northern Ireland. That’s what this is about. There’s no meaningful prospect of constitutional change in the foreseeable future, but within Northern Ireland our electoral position is weaker than it should be. That is their fault. these men have alienated so many unionists away from voting at a time when their political opponents are becoming increasingly radicalised. These are the men Jeffrey needs to finally confront, in the interests of unionism, the unionist people, and our Northern Ireland community as a whole.

So what have they done to undermine unionism within Northern Ireland? These are just a few of the things I feel that wing of the DUP has done to undermine the Unionist community and political unionism since the end of the actual Troubles:

• GFA – refusal to participate in negotiations left Trimble and a split UUP alone and badly outnumbered in the room and very restricted in what he could win for his community. He ultimately agreed a decent one but in both practical and symbolic terms he could have achieved more.
• St Andrews – a cynical attempt to finish off the UUP (Ian Paisley’s true enemy for his entire career) through trying to panic unionist voters into voting DUP or lose the right to have one of the Joint First Ministers wrongly seen as the slightly more important one. It worked up to a point in terms of damaging the UUP but it worked better on the other side of the house where the SDLP proved even less resilient. More harm caused by putting symbolism before practical politics,
• Unionist majority in Stormont – The DUP was strongly behind the decision to reduce the number of seats in Stormont from 108 to 90. Smart move as of the 18 seats removed for the 2017 election, 11 were lost by unionist parties, based on which candidate was runner up in each constituency. Okay, this alone didn’t cause the unionist parties to lose their collective overall majority. Many other unionist voters abstained over DUP attitudes to BREXIT, equal marriage and other sensitive social issues. But the psychological implications for the unionist community was real (if overstated) and could have at least been reduced significantly.
• BREXIT – the obvious one. Okay even if everyone in NI had voted remain we’d still have left, by a smaller margin. But at the time of the referendum Northern Ireland had never been more politically stable. Nor had cross border or UK/ROI relations. Hardline Republicanism had been largely reconciled to at least a medium-term era of participating in making Northern Ireland work successfully and the hardliners on either side had no real voice. BREXIT opened up all the old wounds, brought the border centre stage and not only gave SF and nationalism a cause, but it alienated a very big chunk of the unionist community that were openly supportive of continued EU membership.
• Balance of Power – this was a disaster on so many levels. It brought the most destructive elements of the DUP back to the front line and dear God did they milk it. But badly. They deliberately embarrassed a sympathetic PM in Theresa May and in doing so damaged the entire UK. The Conservative Party is a notoriously unforgiving beast with a long memory, so that was hardly going to go unpunished for long. They embraced and fawned over Boris Johnson only to be predictably let down. It is THEY who have made the Protocol and Windsor Declaration hills to die on, because as I’ve said previously, I don’t detect a real sense of outrage within the broad Protestant/Unionist community. It is they who have made it impossible for themselves to step away from the issue and get on with government.
• Social Policy – they totally failed to read the room on Equal Marriage. For many people, including many from the Protestant community, this was at most a defining issue for Stormont’s parties and at least something by which they certainly weren’t bothered. The nationalist parties grasped that in their own community so they tactically embraced it, The sky didn’t fall in for them in what Spike Milligan used to refer to as Holy Ireland and there would have been no kickback against it from pro union people. Instead, to consistently block such a basic right in Stormont was to alienate thousands of unionist voters, not all of them textbook young and liberal. And this may well have been the DUP’s biggest crime against unionism as a generation has now evolved that is by no means anti- the union but which finds unionist politics embarrassing. Some vote Alliance but as various surveys have indicated, a much greater number stay away from the ballot box. It’s a helluvan achievement for a verbose, campaigning party to  manage to whip up apathy among its own potential voter base.

It won’t be easy for Jeffrey to confront these men the way he needs to. Our media has an inexhaustible appetite for the likes of Allister, Jamie Bryson and their opposite numbers. Even Jim Wells got a turnout of the Belfast Telegraph this week! But this is not 1969, 1974 or 1985. Our people cannot be dragged onto the streets in the way Paisley was able to do. There is no violence on our streets so people don’t feel the need to fight back against a non-existent threat. So if Jeffrey is prepared to confront these men now he will do so against a backdrop of genuine goodwill from the broader community and the alienation of the old Paisleyites might even give him the opportunity to refashion the DUP is a much more voter friendly manner, A process Peter Robinson started but didn’t have the time to complete. So go for it Jeffrey!

A final point. My first ever piece on Slugger, back in March 2020, decried the lack of mainstream pro-union voices either capable of or prepared to articulate a coherent, rational position the broad pro-union people can identify with. I said this:

“The mainstream media is lazy (I don’t think it’s anything more sinister than that). Maybe they do struggle for interesting secular pro-union voices. That laziness or lack of imagination delivers the same go-to affable Prod on at least six different media most weeks but where are the challenging voices?

So, have we no one out there comfortable with their background but not a cliched articulation of it? People, who are confident enough to say what they feel and stand over it? Who feel the arguments is more of an imperative than being invited back?”

If anything its got worse. Basically unionism is represented by the Allister, Bryson, Rev Mervyn Gibson and Wells minority brand. Of course they, like everyone else, deserve to be heard. But equally we need other types of unionism – particularly the secular and constructive type that represents most people I know from whatever social background – to be heard. People who are unambiguously British and who have no intention of leaving the UK, but who are British in the same way as people in the rest of the UK ie their nationality is important to them but doesn’t define their character or outlook on issues beyond the constitutional status.

That brand of unionism is completely absent from the airwaves or the press, Those who are presented as unionist commentators are decent people. But they clearly see their role as to criticise unionist politics – often legitimate criticisms – without actually offering an alternative or even acknowledging that such alternative views exist. So what we have is nationalists criticising unionists, Alliance criticising unionists and the “unionist” commentators criticising unionists. But we have no  commentators articulating positively for the broader unionist community. That also makes it difficult for Jeffrey as if our media is taken as representative then the only unionist attitudes that count are those at the extremes. This can’t be allowed to continue. People need to step forward.