“Infamy, infamy they all have it infamy.” Those are the words that must have been running through Edwin Poots’s head as he scurried out of DUP headquarters after he was given the boot by his party colleagues. What an inglorious end to his 21-day reign as leader of the party. Now his colleague Paul Givan has been put on his notice, he is going to get the chop as Stormont’s first minister. His own da said he wasn’t up to the job anyhow.
What a carry-on indeed, you couldn’t make it up. Farcical is not the word for it. In the meantime, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was elected leader and is looking more and more like the cat that got the cream. The thing is he may – if he doesn’t play his cards right - get that self-satisfied smugness wiped off his face if Boris Johnson sees fit to throw unionism under the bus again.
And so the show goes on. Has anybody heard anything of Ian Paisley? Looks like he has gone down the rabbit hole.
Junior may even be on tour with Van Morrison’s backing group for all we know.
As for Sammy (Sausage) Wilson, is he on the trail of the Cookstown sizzle? You couldn’t fail to spot him, he always has a poke in one hand and a banger in the other.
When British secretary of state Reginald Maudling was on the plane to go home after a flying visit to the north in 1970 he famously exclaimed, “for God’s sake bring me a large Scotch, what a bloody awful country.” He was right to describe the six counties that way.
Unfortunately, 51 years later, although it may be a lot less bloody it is still an awful place politically.
The truth be told, it’s never going to be much better.
This tragic comedy that is called Northern Ireland has run its course, it is time to bring the curtain down.
SEAN MASKEY
Belfast BT15
DUP should remove D from title as democracy has left this party
So Edwin Poots lasted three weeks as leader of the DUP. May I suggest that they remove the D from their title, as democracy has just left this party. If these people really think Jeffrey Donaldson can change anything, they are in for a nasty shock.
Perhaps they could surprise everyone and try a policy of integration instead of the ongoing segregation, but it would mean using a method never tried before. This anti-protocol group had better understand that EU legislation will trump any remedy that any loyalist group tries to impose on the UK parliament. One other point addressed to Michelle O’Neill: You will never get anywhere with this DUP, no matter who is in charge, seeing they are baulking at this Irish language legislation, even though it means going against the UK government, which has approved it.
My advice to Ms O’Neill, for what it is worth, is to go to the electorate and ask them to sort out this mess that the DUP in Stormont has got itself into.
I also understand there has been a clear-out among the delegates within Sinn Féin, so may I suggest replacing the delegate here in the Glens as the present incumbent has not been seen around here since I moved into this area in 2013 - apart from one visit, at my invitation, on August 4 2017, I have not seen her since. If change is needed, then let it start where it matters.
EDWARD MURPHY
Ballycastle, Co Antrim
DUP duped
When observing the decline of the DUP we should remember that London has long since been its life-support system. Pretending as it does that the first past the post electoral system is ‘fair’, the ‘British constitution’ has invariably given unionism more than its proportional share of MPs. And whenever one of the two ‘big’ Westminster parties has been just short of a majority, they have ‘DUPed’ themselves into regarding an arrangement with the unionists as somehow democratic. There was a ‘Labour-plus-UUP’ majority (James Callaghan in 1978) and a ‘Tory-plus-DUP’ majority (Theresa May in 2017), both giving a small bunch of unionists a measure of influence in government, while other much larger parties – Lib-Dems, SNP and the other ‘big’ party – had none.
If both London and Dublin practised what they preached – power sharing – then the unionists would have a bigger voice in an all-Ireland Dáil of just six million people, than in the all-UK Commons which caters for 67 million. Given, however, that both parliaments still use majority voting and always divide themselves into two, government versus opposition, those same unionists know that they could occasionally have the balance of power. If an all-Ireland Leinster House were hung, their chances of being in a majority coalition in the Dáil with either FF or FG, let alone SF, would be just about nil; whereas in Westminster, because both Labour and Tory find it easier to negotiate with the single-issue unionists, the latter’s chances of being in a position of influence in British politics, albeit only every so often, are nevertheless real.
PETER EMERSON
Director, the Borda Institute
Belfast BT14
Australian trade deal
I was bemused by the report in last Monday’s Irish News that Edwin Poots was opposed to the Australian trade deal as it would be detrimental to the interests of the province’s farmers.
Mr Poots was one of the flag bearers of a hard Brexit, his party opposed every possible deal that could have protected our economy against the worst elements of Brexit, he wanted sovereignty returned to Westminster from Brussels.
So the sovereignty has returned and the sovereign government is implementing a protocol that he dislikes and introducing a trade deal with Australia that he also dislikes. This might just be the beginning of trade deals that may disadvantage other sectors of the economy and we can be assured he will be shouting ‘No’ interminably, and totally oblivious to the irony that himself and the DUP are the chief supporters of a Brexit that is now doing economic and social damage to us all.
RAY HENDERSON
Belfast
