They cannot know what they are doing.
If we are indeed headed for a 32-county Ireland, the first new statue in this long-awaited state ought to honour Arlene Foster, with a little Sammy Wilson crouched at her knee in a clown outfit as drawn by Ian Knox and perhaps an Ian Paisley junior in school-boy shorts, making faces beside her.
Brexit may finally rend the flag.
But the unflagging (sorry about that) pace of DUP childish insult over these past few years has revved up the yearning to be done with unionist, British, brute-ignorant, anti-Irish Northern Ireland.
The evidence is anecdotal, the effect unmistakeable. Arlene has made agnostic nationalists into republicans, and more than a few culture-lovers into resolute students of Irish.
The leader of the largest unionist party is still comparatively young, born outside the insular DUP. Ian Paisley senior and Peter Robinson ironically made a better show of ‘sharing power’ with republicans.
A border Protestant for whom attitudes to republicans are personal, Foster’s distinctive tack was comparing Irish-speakers to crocodiles and earlier, considerably earlier, when she dismissed not just Sinn Féin but also the SDLP as ‘rogues and renegades’.
It is quite remarkable how loathed she is, no, despised, by even middle-class, non-republican, indeed anti-republican Catholics.
Majority status recedes in the rear-mirror; unionists in general look increasingly gunked. But just as it becomes impossible to deny the unrelenting demographic changes that mean there will never again be a unionist Northern Ireland, a unionist leader singularly incapable of rethinking her tribe’s politics says she looks forward to the state’s centenary in 2021.
Foster may have reached peak-disaster level some time ago. The assembly election damage to her authority and freak Westminster result leaves her momentarily significant on the Westminster stage, in reality on life-support. Her freelancing MPs ignore her. The anger of unionists and Brexiteer Tories that the Irish border is an issue is a measure of how unthought-out Brexit was.
An independent Irish state at one with the EU baffles them. They want to ‘take back control.’ But 30,000 British troops failed to control the border.
Until a few months ago a strand of unionist gospel, preached by media as well as politicians, warned nationalists of all stripes that they frightened ‘ordinary’ unionists by mentioning border polls, that it was destabilising and intimidating to mention demographics, and a possible future majority for unification.
Have we rushed on from that situation? Are Sammy and co now the Legion of the Rearguard, in action already with the flamethrowers?
The weekend Wilsonisms on what he calls ‘belligerent Brit-bashing’ by mild-mannered Tánaiste Simon Coveney were perhaps inspired by having to play support act to visiting ‘star’ Nigel Farage. Though why invite Farage? Arlene cannot like that provocation of her Tory allies but what Arlene likes is irrelevant.
One of Sammy’s lesser offences is that he splats clichés around. Coveney had ‘taken to the airwaves’, he ‘and co have stuck their heads in the sand’. Though it was a ‘fact’ that border issues could be ‘dealt with by technology’, because it didn’t suit his ‘aggressive Republican agenda’ Coveney had instead ‘tried to flog his pig in a poke solution’ and ‘force it down the throat’ of the UK government.
In a more thoughtful politician this degree of verbal laziness would suggest boredom with his own statements. Maybe it does bore the DUP merchants of insult and bombast to have a British PM so beholden that last week in Westminster she delivered one of their favourite fictions - on the disproportionate prosecution of old soldiers.
Absolutely correct, said Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, although what May had just said was untrue, for which the House of Commons in general demands swift withdrawal, and apology.
Notional chief whip Sir Jeffrey was apparently content to let May talk nonsense because she talked up his special subject. In the Donaldson world-view, chasing after right-wing Tory favour is probably clever. The bulk of Conservatives are not fond of their Ulster prop and stay.
The Westminster team went AWOL some time ago, exhibitionists making most noise.
A dysfunctional British government in hock to a dysfunctional DUP; the upshot is Brexit ‘negotiation’ and politics here similarly on autopilot.
Meanwhile, reputation for competence trashed by her own testimony, the DUP’s disregarded leader has another RHI grilling ahead in September. She doesn’t even represent ‘the people of Northern Ireland’ on Brexit. She has widened the yawning gap with the northern Irish. Yet history may note that she helped to produce a 21st century 32-county Irish republic.
