This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
Might Northern Ireland get there first? Might the union die in the Irish Sea, before it’s killed at the Scottish border? It seems so, if those champions of the union, the DUP, have got anything to do with it.
It’s not as if the rallying cry of Irish Republicanism – Tiocfaidh ár lá, or Our Day Will Come – is likely to materialise into reality anytime soon. But the actions of Ulster’s leading unionist party have unquestionably brought the prospect of Irish unity ever closer.
For two years the DUP’s wearying narcissism, tribalism, and frankly vindictive stupidity held Northern Ireland hostage, causing untold harm to its population.
The DUP collapsed Stormont, protesting the very Brexit it demanded. But let’s be blunt, Sinn Fein’s rise to become Northern Ireland’s leading party, meaning its vice-president Michelle O’Neill would be First Minister, played significantly into the DUP’s bitter, divisive machinations.
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Now, Stormont is back, O’Neill in the boss chair, and DUP hardliners are left sucking their thumbs. The deal struck to get this rabble back to work is fundamentally the same deal they destroyed when Theresa May met her Waterloo in Parliament.
It’s pitiful, damnable. DUP sabotage caused real-world damage. Northern Ireland’s health service is crippled, worse than in any other part of Britain.
These juvenile refusenik games meant civil servants had to run the country, but were unable to make necessary changes as they lacked legal and political power.
Consequentially, £3.3 billion in UK funding was withheld, and Northern Ireland plunged into strikes.
The DUP claimed it was all to save ‘the union’. Perhaps the strategy was: ‘Save the union by destroying the union’?
If the DUP really was trying to save the union – from the imaginary evils of the EU, which kept Northern Ireland afloat during and after The Troubles – then it backfired.
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The DUP proved unionists will wound their own country brutally and deliberately over byzantine arguments around imaginary sea borders just to get their own way, and one over on their historic enemies Sinn Fein.
Now, Sinn Fein can pose as Stormont’s saviours; the voice of reason. O’Neill talks about the hard work needed to get society on track, while the DUP – with disgraceful inevitability – prepares for internal feuding over the latest deal.
Because, of course, it’s just not good enough for the DUP. Nothing is ever good enough for the DUP. They live in a power-sharing democracy but want to be top dog and hoard power. So their loyalist pride is wounded at the thought of a working class Republican woman running the show.
'If the DUP really was trying to save the union from the imaginary evils of the EU then it backfired' (Image: Newsquest)
Northern Ireland opinion polls don’t yet favour either Irish unity or any border poll. But surveys do show more people believe there will be unification within a decade than those who don’t. Almost 80% of the population supports the EU.
Demographic change gives more fair winds to unity. Among young people in the north of Ireland there’s majority support for unification. One poll in 2022 – an outlier – had 41% of all voters saying they’d vote Yes to unity, compared to 48% No. Among young people support for unity stood at 57%.
Northern Ireland now has more Catholics – who traditionally support unity – than Protestants, for the first time in its history.
With such tides flowing in society, it’s clear to see how the DUP causing harm to the nation it claims to love in effect lays down the paving stones which lead Northern Ireland ever closer to a border poll and potential unity.
It’s still some way off, but thanks to unionists, the union has never been in more danger. Quite the fitting epitaph for the DUP.
Neil Mackay: Ulster’s unionists lay the foundations for United Ireland
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02.02.2024
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.
Might Northern Ireland get there first? Might the union die in the Irish Sea, before it’s killed at the Scottish border? It seems so, if those champions of the union, the DUP, have got anything to do with it.
It’s not as if the rallying cry of Irish Republicanism – Tiocfaidh ár lá, or Our Day Will Come – is likely to materialise into reality anytime soon. But the actions of Ulster’s leading unionist party have unquestionably brought the prospect of Irish unity ever closer.
For two years the DUP’s wearying narcissism, tribalism, and frankly vindictive stupidity held Northern Ireland hostage, causing untold harm to its population.
The DUP collapsed Stormont, protesting the very Brexit it demanded. But let’s be blunt, Sinn Fein’s rise to become Northern Ireland’s leading party, meaning its vice-president Michelle O’Neill would be First Minister, played significantly into the DUP’s bitter, divisive........
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