Opinion

Tories `slash and burn' approach will cost DUP dear

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

George Osborne begins his Budget speech at 12.30pm today
George Osborne begins his Budget speech at 12.30pm today George Osborne begins his Budget speech at 12.30pm today

You have to hand it to the Conservatives. They don't hang about. Talk about cheek, chutzpah, arrogance, nerve, they have them. Compared to Blair's three sessions in government and all that time he wasted dithering about whether Labour could win the next election if there was radical reform, these guys don't care. They just go for it no matter how nasty, unscrupulous, self-serving or unpopular their actions are.

Today all the emphasis is on George Osborne's latest slash and burn foray into the welfare system, whacking away at tax credits and housing benefit and the total benefit cap. Oh yes, and the BBC, long regarded by Daily Mail readers as a hotbed of red conspirators. What was established as part of the welfare or benefit system for pensioners over 75, the fact that they get free TV licences, is now to be paid for by the BBC. Bizarre. You can be certain gas and electricity companies won't be asked to pay for pensioners' winter fuel allowances.

The Conservatives are working their way through their election manifesto which was in reality a negotiating document. They set out their most outlandish policies because they never believed they were going to win the election outright and assumed they would have to water down much of it to get back into coalition with the Lib Dems. Remember them?

Now to the unconcealed glee of the Conservatives they can do what they like and point to the manifesto they were elected on. In fact they've started with what they would like to have done in 2010 but their coalition partners wouldn't let them. Apart from cutting the welfare system to bits and privatising the NHS, they're also proceeding with parliamentary reform which the Lib Dems stopped in 2012 because Cameron blocked House of Lords reform after scuppering any version of PR in British elections.

As it happens parliamentary reform has a substantial impact here which you've probably forgotten about. The Conservatives intend to reduce the number of seats in the Commons from 650 to 600. They also intend to have as close as possible to the same number of voters in each constituency - around 76,000 give or take 5 per cent. One handy by-product of that is they will pick up about 20 more seats while Labour will lose about a dozen.

Conveniently the legislation is sitting there ready to go since the Lib Dems blocked it in 2012. What does it means for here? For a start the number of seats will be reduced from eighteen to sixteen. Also conveniently, by 2013 the north's Boundary Commission had already worked out the new boundaries and any subsequent re-working on the basis of the 2015 electoral roll won’t come up with any substantial difference.

Essentially Belfast will go down from four seats to three and West Tyrone will vanish. There will be north Belfast, south-east Belfast and south-west Belfast with an interesting boundary somewhere along the fleg-bedecked Ormeau Road. You possibly remember this was the plan in 2012. It means the DUP cannot win the new Belfast south-east seat. It will be Naomi Long's forever after 2020.

The DUP were reconciled to the loss of East Belfast until the Lib Dems blocked the legislation in autumn 2012. Suddenly the DUP realised East Belfast was there to win back. It's no coincidence their despicable campaign against Alliance which sparked a year of ferocious sectarianism began immediately.

On the other side of the fence with West Tyrone going there will be a shake-up in the north-west and Mid-Ulster with the East Derry seat going and with it Gregory Campbell. Aaah. The new seat of Glenshane will be majority nationalist and will go to Sinn Féin. As they say, it’s a long road has no turning.

There's a knock-on effect on the assembly. Paragraph 56 of the Stormont House Agreement envisaged five MLAs per constituency. With sixteen constituencies that eliminates twenty-eight MLAs. Do they know that? Watch out for the proposed number of MLAs per constituency suddenly rising to six again.

So, it just goes to show that with two, and maybe three DUP MPs out, and at least a dozen MLAs being wiped off the books the effects of Conservative reforms aren't all bad.