Current British politics is dominated by untruth, and the arena here is dominated by two parties who routinely feed their voters half-truths, if not downright falsehood.
The ballot-box has not yet punished Sinn Féin and the DUP. But pre-election manoeuvring has begun, and their apparent immunity may be in danger.
The DUP came home from London to insist that although every other significant group here ridiculed it, and Brussels groaned, last week’s Boris wheeze was for the best. For the first time, though, both Nigel Dodds and Jeffrey Donaldson sounded stumped when questioned. Dodds the irritable and Donaldson the smooth usually withstand pressure better than their party leader. This time the snappish, reflexive ‘let me finish’ could not hide the fact that the DUP, under Number 10 pressure, had leaned over backwards and collapsed on Arlene Foster’s reddest line.
No London cavalry rushed to the rescue. Chaos rules in Downing Street. But in any case Westminster has become increasingly unfriendly territory for a party which used to glory in the old Millwall stance of ‘Nobody likes us, we don’t care’.
Dodds draws cold looks for repeatedly jeering at the respected Sylvia Hermon, as the only Remainer Northern Ireland voice in the chamber. Those were striking gasps in June last year at Sammy Wilson railing against Northern Ireland abortion provision, immediately after then Tory MP Heidi Allen had talked with pain about her own abortion. There was no DUP answer to Anna Soubry’s question about the women who each year travel to Britain for terminations they cannot have at home: ‘What are you going to do? Make them stay in Northern Ireland to have children that they don’t want?’
The anti-choice brigade has never had a credible answer to that. Their pitch is the same worldwide. Legislation, because they say so, must enforce their conscience over women’s reproductive choices, female autonomy. Although the chances are they have mobilised too late, the prospect of an election providing a pressure point on politicians has Churches gearing up to use whatever clout they can still wield.
A Catholic Church badly damaged by scandal and its unchanged all-male hierarchy presumably values Baroness Nuala O’Loan; sign her petition, says Archbishop Eamon Martin, and other bishops. O’Loan has revealed that she nominated herself to the House of Lords. She nonetheless denounces Westminster’s provision of abortion here as a ‘denial of democracy’.
This is not an overwhelming crusade. On one side stand Protestant Church leaders who have rarely made an impact on their own, never mind the wider community, alongside celibate prelates fronted up by an unelected, crucially female intellectual. Plus the DUP, eager to convince their voters that this really, truly was not their fault, and just don’t ask why they didn’t tear up their deal with the Tories to block it. Hardly a terrifying line-up, you might think.
But Sinn Féin eyed it, sniffed the wind, and developed a bad case of cowardice. Do they think Aontú is about to re-invent itself? Perhaps loss of nerve is related to a raft of unpleasant stories; the past that will not die, Spotlight’s blood-thirsty priest-bomber, Stakeknife simmering away. Maybe it is as much to do with internal lack of direction, inability to compete with or whole-heartedly back the Dublin government’s anti-Brexit performance. Whatever the cause, last Monday night the party’s Belfast councillors turned their back on the ringing promise by Mary-Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill to northern women of ‘The North is Next.’
O’Neill reiterated the council U-turn in her response to that overdue judgment for Sarah Ewart. Respecting women’s right to choose? Only in the Republic. When it comes to the difficult issue of abortion, partition rules ok.
Ask anyone who wants your vote where they stand, say the antis. Anyone who dislikes posturing, and fibbers, will hope that the SF and DUP face hard questions on the doorsteps - from both sides of the argument.
