The cast of the pantomime at Stormont end their season next week, just as the normal pantomime season begins. But then the performance at Stormont isn’t normal.
A normal pantomime is a daily production applauded by the audience, whereas the Stormont version produces nothing but rancour and is viewed with indifference.
The evidence shows the rancour is mainly provoked by the DUP.
What kicked it off was a LucidTalk poll on August 15, just as the executive was about to reassemble after their far-too-long summer hols.
The poll showed that the TUV had become the third largest party in the north, leapfrogging the Alliance Party. The TUV was only four points behind the DUP, which was down 7% since the executive was re-established in February 2024.
A further swing of 2% would put the TUV on level pegging with the DUP. If the march of the TUV continues, it will take lumps out of the DUP in the 2027 assembly elections.
So what did the DUP officer board decide to do? Exactly the wrong strategy.
Like the 2021 poll which caused panic stations in the party and ultimately led to the defenestration of Arlene Foster and a split in the DUP which has never healed, the party lurched to the right. DUP figures began to ape the TUV.
Thus, no sooner had the returning executive issued a joint statement in September condemning sectarian and racist violence than the wheels fell off.
Gavin Robinson launched an attack on Michelle O’Neill, in which he supported a daft idea for the British army to have a stall at a jobs fair in Derry, completely ignoring the fact that the result would have been protests and boycotts, especially since the trial of Soldier F was to begin the following week.
We’ll not list all the stand-offs and blockages the DUP caused in the next three months. Suffice to say the executive hasn’t been acting as an executive.
The underlying reason for unionist disquiet is the Irish Sea border, and DUP dishonesty and duplicity about it.
An exchange in early November crystallised the core of the matter.
When challenged on the BBC angry man’s radio show about being in dispute with his partners in government, Paul Givan rejected the basis for the question.
He said: “Sinn Féin are not my partners in government. To infer that there is a partnership, that suggests something that isn’t the reality.” He added that ‘partnership’ is “a pejorative term”.
The TUV’s Timothy Gaston challenged Givan in the assembly on the exchange. He said: “Sinn Féin are your partners, Mr Givan, because the DUP voluntarily chose to break their word to the people, go back into government with them and implement the Protocol alongside them.”
That’s a charge that’s magnified by the keyboard warriors and loyalist bloggers on social media, which the DUP finds impossible to answer, so instead they have resorted to try to out-TUV the TUV in hostility to Sinn Féin, a futile exercise.
More than that, there is disquiet among unionist-inclined Alliance voters about the party’s unwavering support for the EU and the Irish Sea border, so the DUP has been stirring up antipathy to Alliance through often hysterical and false allegations about its policies on LGBGT and analogous societal issues.
Even more alarmingly, the DUP has been aping the TUV’s strident anti-immigrant rhetoric, which leads to some people feeling justified in mounting racist attacks largely in unionist districts.
One certain outcome of the DUP lurch to the right is that they have begun the campaign for the 2027 assembly elections, but paradoxically the DUP campaign is against the TUV for the unionist vote, not against SF.
In fact, the upshot of the DUP antics is that their performative misbehaviour will have twin consequences. They will strengthen the SF vote and also reinforce the belief that the TUV analysis in correct.
The TUV ‘analysis’, for want of a better word, is simple, consistent and negative: bring down the executive until the Irish Protocol, which the British call the Windsor Framework, is abolished.
It won’t happen, and the Irish Sea border will tighten because Starmer won’t dare move closer to the EU and Farage certainly won’t.
Given these facts, will there be a future pantomime season at Stormont?
