Opinion

Brian Feeney: DUP committed to proving north is a failed entity

Jeffrey Donaldson has highlighted problems with the protocol and made new claims about future issues in a new DUP document. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire
Jeffrey Donaldson has highlighted problems with the protocol and made new claims about future issues in a new DUP document. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire Jeffrey Donaldson has highlighted problems with the protocol and made new claims about future issues in a new DUP document. Picture by Liam McBurney/PA Wire

ONE of the reasons the British government can get away with spouting so much poppycock about the protocol is that hardly anyone in Britain cares about it, much less knows anything about it, and is oblivious to the results of its proposed abolition.

After all, it’s Northern Ireland – groan. Even if the anti-protocol bill passed, which is unlikely in the extreme, it would take time for the consequences to have any effect on the life of the average person in Britain.

In the meantime, members of the British government continue to justify their illegal actions, as you heard on Monday, by repeating brazen lies that sound reasonable to people who haven’t a clue about Ireland, north or south.

It’s to protect the Good Friday Agreement – lie. Tearing up the protocol will not damage the single market – lie. There’s no need for a trade border – lie. And so on.

No-one in the British government (let alone the DUP) is ever asked the simple question: since you’ve left the single market and customs union, there has to be a trade border with the EU as at Dover, so where is it in Ireland?

Be that as it may, the consequences for the north, even though the bill won’t pass, are very serious.

Jeffrey Donaldson has boxed himself into a corner. Egged on by Jim Allister who sets the DUP agenda, and by the ERG who set Boris Johnson’s agenda, Donaldson is committed to the abolition of the protocol.

He didn’t use to be in this extremist position but that’s where he has got himself now. In the process the British government has either stood by or actively encouraged him as he dismantled the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement they falsely claim to be protecting.

Last week Bertie Ahern, who has a wee bit of an interest in the GFA, pointed out that there’s no longer any north-south cooperation and that the Irish and British governments no longer speak to each other. Yet Johnson claims the GFA is now unbalanced. There are now no aspects of the GFA operating.

The question is how can the GFA be resurrected? It’s a question neither the British government nor the DUP seems interested in addressing.

The anti-protocol bill won’t get through the Lords so the government (if Johnson is still around) will have to invoke the Parliament Act which will hold the bill up until 2024.

Meanwhile, the DUP will continue to refuse to attend Stormont. People talk of an election in October or November. There won’t be one because it would be an election to an action replay of where we are now.

It used to be that the DUP was the party of devolution because Ian Paisley worried correctly that direct rule would mean Westminster passing laws unpalatable to him and his palaeolithic party.

Now it seems a majority of DUP elected representatives prefer unpalatable legislation to operating devolution if it means sharing power with Sinn Féin.

It’s no good hoping that if Johnson is overthrown a new British government will begin to repair relations with Dublin and rebuild the GFA institutions. Donaldson and the DUP won’t cooperate because they’ve learned they can get away with boycotting any arrangement in the north.

The courts won’t intervene when the DUP acts unlawfully and it’s unlikely a Conservative government would act jointly with Dublin as in 2005-7 to threaten the DUP with closer north-south links.

After a certain period with no executive and civil servants unable to spend department budgets fully, the British government will have to intervene. Piecemeal legislation will only do for a while so they will edge towards direct rule.

All this because a political minority in the north refuses to cooperate in working the north for the benefit of everyone here.

As you’ve read here before the DUP is committed to proving beyond peradventure that the north is a failed entity.