By the time you read this, Brexit may be on the longest of fingers or in some form careering closer.
What is relatively plain – though not ‘clear’, a describing word bled of meaning by T. May – is that for the moment the hardest Brexiteers do not include the DUP, though the freeloader formerly known as Junior may still be hanging around them. DUP discipline in his regard is like Tory Central now, the most glaring example of damage Brexit has caused before it is even implemented, or re-interpreted via layers of fudge.
The backwash from an idea ill-thought out and pursued with uninhibited aggression has distorted political relations between Britain and Ireland, nationalists and unionists, harm that continues and will not be easily halted or mended. The two main northern parties are disoriented. The lesser two look even more feeble than before. Being onlookers in a crisis, never good for political self-esteem, has heightened the irrelevance of the SDLP and UUP. What it means for Sinn Féin is harder to judge than the pomp of entitlement that is the DUP.
Internal discipline was one thing the DUP of Paisley and his successor could be proud of, sufficient unto the day, or so the inner circle professed to believe. As the founding father taught them, they felt no embarrassment because they never tried to make friends and influence people. Nobody likes us and we don’t care was what they sang, disguised thinly as hymns, at party conferences. As the first era crumbled, the most famous sing-along was the memorable ‘Arlene’s on fire’, a bad choice in the La Mon, a sickish joke as the fiery one combusted in a bonfire of crocs and RHI.
By the time Brexit hit, the party was well down an unlit path to an outcome courted, it looks now, almost in a spirit of cut off nose to spite face. Chance, plus the elimination of UUP and SDLP Westminster seats, brought the tie-up with May. There is love and respect on neither side. What it liberated in today’s dimmer and more extreme Tories has been freedom to turn back the clock and ignore the existence of what is now an equal-sized political identity to unionism in the neglected fourth ‘nation’ of Northern Ireland.
Until that weak, late feint by May here in her latest visit, even the pretext of even-handedness had disappeared. Small wonder the wider British-Irish relationship has been so dented, unionists frozen versus nationalists in renewed distrust.
British outrage at Irish insistence on a separate Irish interest will not be forgotten. The clumsy unionist attempts at softer talk over the past fortnight cut very little ice. Jeffrey Donaldson on RTE channels his reasonable side, then falls over on the ‘legacy issue’. It seems like only yesterday that Sammy Wilson was retailing, straight-faced, his ministerial efforts to build good cross-border relations. He has been back and forward since. Whoppers to Claire Byrne’s face were not smart.
Leo Varadkar at the Alliance conference re-dedicating himself to impartiality between unionism and nationalism is about as convincing to unionists as Wilson and Donaldson will ever be to nationalists. As he has on Brexit, Varadkar on the north needs to discover a centre of gravity.
But the Brexit effect north of the border on Sinn Féin, with their poll standing up in the Republic, is difficult to disentangle from other factors. The south mostly neither realises, nor would care if they did, that Mary Lou McDonald has lost her gloss here. The stupidity of her unnecessary comments on replacing Chief Constable George Hamilton and the way she hammered it in by repeating the sentiment was an insult to colleague Gerry Kelly, doing his best to cover for her. What happened to the sure touch so welcome when she became leader?
Another factor is that few any longer puzzle over Michelle O’Neill’s ability, or lack of it. Taking the longer perspective, the northern party has been off-balance since they were caught out by the boundary commission recommendations. Yet of course, like the DUP, the party may lose few votes in May. In both cases, if so, it will be a simple demonstration of demographic muscle-flexing.
Sleeping Stormont is a passive grievance. Brexit has tautened the tension with the DUP. Brexit debate, like border poll discussion, is better conducted away from politicians by livewire academics and the (still possibly intriguing) civic nationalists of the Waterfront.
By the time this is printed, the attempted walk back of pre-Brexit tensions may be over. The damage is still emerging.
