Sir, – After the Belfast Agreement, unionism had won. To save face, nobody spoke about it, but everybody knew. Sinn Féin’s position reflected the pragmatism of its voters – that is, provided there was no economic land border to rub their noses in it, many nationalists quietly had been making their peace with the political border.
The DUP never understood that. It wasn’t enough for the DUP that, increasingly, nationalists de facto were relatively relaxed about being in the UK; the DUP wished further to purify the North by cutting it off from the EU as well. Strategically, that was the “rub their noses in it” option, and it is staggeringly inept. The best way to strengthen the union would have been to have voted Remain. The next best way to secure the union would be to support the NI Protocol.
Unfortunately, the DUP’s constitutional insecurity, and its tendency to prefer threats and coercion over persuasion, means that it has already painted itself into a corner. All it can do now is to blame the paintbrush.
Ordinarily, a party representing a mere 0.4 per cent of UK voters would not be able to issue ultimatums to anybody, or to garner prime air-time in so doing. Unfortunately, it suits the beleaguered Boris Johnson’s Brexit cabinet to use the DUP as a mud-flap in its ongoing diversionary squabbles with the EU.
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This mix of Tory cynicism and DUP paranoia (and subsequent politicking) means that the North may contrive to squander the greatest economic opportunity it has ever been presented with. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN MacCANN,
Trillick,
Co Tyrone.