Opinion

Jim Gibney: Self-interest dominates Tory policial actions

DUP leader Arlene Foster and British prime minister Theresa May
DUP leader Arlene Foster and British prime minister Theresa May DUP leader Arlene Foster and British prime minister Theresa May

It is unlikely you will have heard of the Chagos Islands. Until last week, I hadn’t.

For the Chagos Islands read Ireland, Gibraltar, Las Malvinas (Falklands), etc. The Chagos Islands are in the Indian Ocean, 9,000 miles away from us.

The British government has occupied the islands since the eighteenth century and renamed the region, the ‘British Indian Oceanic Territory’.

The British with US support decided to turn the islands into a military base.

So, in 1967 they evicted over 1500 people from their homeland and they have not been allowed to return since.

The Chagos Islands were in the news last week because the British government experienced a welcome and humiliating defeat at the United Nations General Assembly in a vote over decolonisation and its control over the islands.

By a margin of 94 to 15, delegates supported a Mauritian government-backed resolution to seek the opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Hague on the legal status of the Chagos Islands.

For the Mauritian government the issue, rightly so, is one of sovereignty and independence. For the British government, its occupation is excused on the grounds of security.

Quite what it is protecting 9,000 miles away is anyone’s guess.

Beyond clinging to power, as you might a piece of driftwood when you are drowning, what precisely Theresa May thinks will come out of her self-serving deal with the DUP is also anyone’s guess.

For May’s government, it is power at any price, dressed up in ‘will of the people’ claims while she recklessly puts at risk the carefully structured, balance ethos, equality-centred, Good Friday Agreement, with its ‘totality of relationships’ framework.

But then that is hardly surprising when you consider the chaos she has plunged British society into over Brexit as well as the unforeseen knock-on consequences for the Irish economy.

The precarious nature of the deal and the difficulties the May government and the DUP will face emerged last week from both predictable and unpredictable quarters.

Just at the point where the DUP think it is the all-powerful and only ‘king-maker’ the British Labour Party stepped in and nearly caused a Tory defeat over the Queen’s speech with regards to funding for women from the north of Ireland seeking abortions.

The Tory government, facing a backlash and defeat from its own backbenchers, agreed to the funding in the space of twenty-four hours.

The point at issue here is not whether you support or do not support the decision. It is the total disregard the Tories have for the views of the population and parties of the north and how they might view this funding.

The sole concern for May’s government was to hold onto power at all costs and to avoid defeat. It had to make up its mind instantly and did so in its own interest. Nothing new there then.

I wonder were the DUP consulted about the funding decision and if so what was their response? I also wonder what its voters will think of the DUP supporting the Tory government on such a controversial issue which has a direct bearing on people in the north?

Last week also highlighted starkly the DUP’s support for further Tory cuts to public spending in its support for a continuing cap on public sector workers' wages.

And there are more cuts to come. The billion pound Tory-DUP ‘sweet-heart’ deal might just go up in smoke like the half-billion ‘ash-for-cash' heating scandal by the time the cuts to the north’s public services are accounted for.

And this partisan and desperate clinging to power is likely to ensure that the DUP will face little or no pressure from the Tories to restore the all-Ireland institutions, the executive and the assembly.

The Tories are quite happy for the DUP to prevent the people of the north from living in a rights-based society where it is a right to speak Irish; where the legacy of the conflict is resolved; where being gay is respected and all of this is guaranteed in law by a Bill of Rights.

Such a society would not be acceptable in Britain but there are no votes for the Tories in the north nor for that matter in the Chagos Islands.

So self-interest prevails in both cases.