Opinion

Alex Kane: DUP's position is nowhere near as strong as they think it is

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

DUP leader Arlene Foster. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire
DUP leader Arlene Foster. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire DUP leader Arlene Foster. Picture by Niall Carson/PA Wire

A few weeks before the 2010 general election, when the UUP and Conservatives were fielding joint candidates as part of the UCUNF project (Google the term if it's new to you, it's far too convoluted to explain right now), a DUP candidate told me: "The UUP are going to do badly, Alex. Unionists don't trust the Conservatives because they know they'll always betray them in the end. Look at Heath, Thatcher and Major. They'll always put their own interests first. They calculate they'll need you one day and then calculate again weeks, months or years later that you're no use to them any more. It's what they do. It's why they've survived so long. So you can take it from me, UCUNF are winning no seats in this election and there'll be no tide of votes away from us."

Skip on eight years and the DUP is propping up the Conservatives. That's not to say that the DUP actually trusts them any more than it did in 2010. There's hardly a week goes by when someone from the DUP doesn't issue a warning to Mrs May about withdrawing support if she gives any indication of pushing through changes on abortion, or same-sex-marriage, or an Irish Language Act, or agrees to anything on Brexit that leaves Northern Ireland in some sort of 'special status' limbo.

Of course they don't trust her - knowing that she was never in the Leave camp. They don't trust the soft Brexiteers in her cabinet and backbenches, the sort of people who support 'special status.' And nor do they particularly trust the hard Brexiteers, the sort of people who would sacrifice Northern Ireland rather than see it used as the lynchpin of a broader deal that wouldn't 'free the UK from the shackles of the EU.'

So if they don't trust the Conservatives why did the DUP cut a deal with them? Well, they needed something to offset the fact that the Assembly wasn't sitting and there was no DUP first minister. They needed something to distract attention from the fact that in the 2017 Assembly election unionists - under the DUP's watch - had, for the first time ever, lost their overall majority in a Northern Irish Parliament/Assembly. They needed to show they had clout even without an Assembly (and, in fairness to them, they did negotiate a fairly good economic package as part of the deal). Most important of all though, Mrs May's reliance on them meant that they could prevent her from doing anything in Assembly matters that they didn't like. Why do you think salaries and expenses remain untouched?

But the biggest question of all for the DUP is this: if the government had to make a choice between pleasing the DUP or cutting a Brexit deal which left Northern Ireland 'not quite the same' as the rest of the UK, what choice would the government make? Mrs May could argue - citing the evidence of opinion polls - that a majority of people in Northern Ireland (including a majority of unionists) favoured a soft Brexit. She could also say to the DUP that there was likely to be a majority in both the Commons and Lords for such a deal; meaning that even if they threatened to abandon her she would still carry a Parliamentary majority. As it happens, I think the DUP would find, as happened on the vote to approve the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985, that very few Conservatives would actually rally to their side.

What I'm really saying is that the DUP's position is nowhere as strong as they may imagine it to be. They've no guarantee that another election would deliver the same Commons arithmetic. They cannot destroy a deal which has the support of the Labour, SNP, PC and Liberal parties, as well as a substantial majority of the Conservative party. They certainly don't won't to provoke the sort of crisis in which the specific nature and purpose of their unionism is called into question; the sort of crisis which could lead to a border poll. And, of course, if the deal with the Conservatives collapses they will have no control over what a Conservative (or even Labour) government would do re the Assembly; let alone what sort of 'new' relationship could develop between London and Dublin.

At some point in the next few months - maybe even weeks - all of this will come to a head. The DUP cannot afford to be on the losing side of an argument in which their views will be dwarfed by a massive Commons majority. The 2017 Assembly election result was a massive blow for the DUP. The absence of an Assembly has damaged them - even if it's not just their fault it isn't functioning. RHI has become a serial embarrassment for them. They can't afford to take a hit from a Conservative government which has no particular long term interest in them.

The DUP has only one big card to play: unfortunately for them it has Joker on one side and Pyrrhic Victory on the other.