Jeff Peel's Diary

The DUP made clear today at the launch of their “manifesto” that a Sinn Fein win would be a disaster for Unionism.  Why?  Surely every time a Shinner gets elected in the Northern Ireland jurisdiction it’s a good thing for unionism because it weakens Sinn Fein’s all-island mandate. 

Because, no matter which way you look at things, the Shinners have signed-up the the Union.  The Good Friday Agreement (and various flavours of Agreement since) has made clear that Northern Ireland’s constitutional future is fixed.  The Shinners can put up as many posters as they wish about Ireland this and Ireland that but the plain fact is that elected representatives from here have no mandate that extends to the Republic – even if they wish to pretend otherwise.  In Europe no-one even cares. 

Which takes us to the DUP’s definition of Unionism.  For the DUP the union has lost all equivalence to Union.  It’s become an Ulster thing.  It’s all about Loyal Orders, gay-bating, Ulsterishness, Ulster-Scots, Blandness, Dourness and Isolation.  It’s about making this place anti-cosmopolitan, separatist and parcohial.  It’s everything the Union isn’t.  Just compare the DUP’s definition of Unionism with a Londoner’s.  A Londoner, confronted with the word “Unionist” thinks of a ranting “Irish” nutter. 

The DUP is, in fact, in a duopolitical union with Sinn Fein.  Sinn Fein is the DUP’s parter with whom it never agrees.  Indeed the DUP/Sinn Fein Union reminds me of an Irish divorce – each partner snipes and yaps about the other.  But they still co-habit.  They share the salaries and expenses.  They rear the kids to take sides.  But, fundamentally, they are sad old gits who should just go their separate ways and leave us all alone, spared from their constant circular bickering that never reachs a conclusion. 

As for the Union, the election has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  As an STV based election it’s not even a very good bell-weather of popular opinion.  The turn-out will be awful.

My postman today handed me a handful of election leaflets muttering, “Here’s a load of election crap.” 

And that’s just what it is.  The DUP’s chest-beating and doom merchanting is just that: crap.  The Union will still be there if the Shinners win.  If the Duppies win the union will be a little worse off, because the DUP has lost all sense of what the union stands for.