Opinion

Newton Emerson: Tight deadlines bring risks for DUP

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The British government insists it will not put the bill to disapply the protocol through the Commons until the DUP restores the assembly. Pictured is DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire.
The British government insists it will not put the bill to disapply the protocol through the Commons until the DUP restores the assembly. Pictured is DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire. The British government insists it will not put the bill to disapply the protocol through the Commons until the DUP restores the assembly. Pictured is DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire.

The bill to disapply the protocol has come with tight deadlines for the DUP to return to Stormont.

The government insists it will not put the bill through the Commons until the DUP restores the assembly. Ministers want this done by Westminster’s July 21 summer recess.

Before the bill is pushed on through the Lords, the government also expects the DUP to restore the executive. Peers return from holiday on September 5.

That might seem to give the DUP a summer breather as Stormont is off for the whole of July and August. However, as recent events have demonstrated, the assembly can be recalled at any time if 30 MLAs sign a petition. The DUP may have to raise the next petition itself to nominate a speaker in July.

The party might fear restoring devolution and still having no legislation to show for it. But if it defies the deadlines there will certainly be no legislation, it will clearly be the DUP’s fault, the government will have full cover to do a deal over unionism’s head - and that will be clearly be the DUP’s fault as well.

This would be a poor record heading into an election, which must be called if there is no deputy first minister by the end of October.

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The European Court of Human Rights has not banned deportation flights to Rwanda. It has paused them while it decides if they are banned. Previous rulings from the court suggest it could allow the policy as long as asylum seekers have legal routes of entry. Nor is the government seriously thinking of taking the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights if it loses the case. The whole thing is Tory political theatre. Nevertheless, it has a toxic effect on politics in Northern Ireland as the convention is part of the Good Friday Agreement - and political theatrics can take on a life of their own.

The UK risks making the same mistake it made with Brexit, storming out of an international body because it cannot bear being told what to do.

The trick with such bodies is to nod along to their orders, then do whatever you like.

On average, 400 of the court’s 1,000 annual judgments are ignored by its signatory states. Almost nobody notices and there are essentially no consequences.

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Foreign secretary Liz Truss has referred to the “Irish tea sock” during an RTE interview. It is a testament to the new balance of British-Irish relations that this has provoked only mirth in Ireland, not indignation.

Even pronounced correctly, the phrase “Irish taoiseach” - now a common expression in British broadcasting - is a grating tautology. All taoisigh are Irish. There was a time when no television editor would have allowed such sloppy wording on air.

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The Orange Order is suffering a disastrous collapse in self-confidence and wider community acceptance following the video of sectarian singing in an Orange Hall two weeks ago. Paranoia is rife as the modest improvement in its image in recent years unravels overnight. Unionists have accused the BBC of dropping live coverage of the Twelfth due to the video, although the decision was taken earlier for financial and long-standing editorial reasons. In Glengormley, loyalists started a needless row over the Orange arch, thinking new Sinn Féin infrastructure minister John O’Dowd would withhold planning permission. That is not how planning works and permission was granted.

As a measure of how far the order’s fortunes have suddenly fallen, it is only nine months since Mary Lou McDonald said she supported the Twelfth becoming a public holiday in a united Ireland, in an unprompted remark to the press. Would any party leader in the Republic suggest such a thing today?

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Moves are afoot to shut down the UK’s 30 Confucius Institutes, the Chinese cultural organisations that partner with universities. There is government and cross-party support at Westminster for an amendment to the new Higher Education bill, targeting Confucius Institutes as agencies of the Chinese government. Higher education is devolved so the bill mainly applies to England and Wales. However, in the Commons on Monday, the Conservative MP proposing the amendment, Alicia Kearns, asked why Scotland has the world’s highest number of Confucius Institutes by population, adding “there is a reason why the Chinese Communist Party has chosen to infiltrate Scottish education”. Although she did not elaborate, she did not need to - MPs clearly suspect a plot to subvert the unity of the UK.

Holyrood will be unable to avoid this issue and so eventually will Stormont, as there is a Confucius Institute at Ulster University. The constitutional concern driving the debate means that when it does arrive on our shores, it could prove highly contentious.

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Sinn Féin has put unlawful road safety signs up in north Belfast, marked “Slow” in English and Irish and featuring the party logo.

DUP councillor Brian Kingston says this is “considered intimidatory by unionist residents”. Maybe so, but from a road safety perspective the problem is the signs are not intimidating enough. To have any hope of slowing down Belfast’s drivers, the signs really need to feature an IRA logo.