WE are living in historic and tumultuous times in respect of BREXIT and the DUP at the present time. In fact we are probably witnessing the last great dramatic act of Irish Protestant Unionist political power playing itself out on the national British and European stages, with the DUP, for now, holding great power in the outcome of vital continent wide negotiations. It’s been quite a blast over the centuries from Co Down’s Lord Castlereagh and his brother carving up Europe at the Congress of Vienna two centuries ago, to Ulster Prime Minister Bonar Law heading the British Empire just over a century ago, to our own (Donegal’s) Field Marshall Montgomery more recently. He was of course Winston Churchill’s top general in the great pan European (and world) moral war against Nazism. Don’t forget the host of less significant Irish unionists, important in their own day, devoting their lives to sustaining the idea of the British state in a variety of forms. Perhaps the DUP stand like Jacopo Belbo* in the cemetery of San Davide, holding the final note on his trumpet as the shots are fired over the partisans, feeling that if his note falters the sun would fly off like a balloon, feeling the universe was in his control. Perhaps they don’t feel like that, but one thing is certain, the universe will move on its inevitable path, regardless of what they feel at the moment. This means Northern Ireland by some means will be in the EU customs union and free market, and still be part of the UK, in a rejigged relationship. And I tell you there must be a Protestant God up there somewhere, because the consequence of losing, as they inevitably will, this highly destabilizing game of political brinkmanship, is a border poll put off for at least a decade, Sinn Fein forced back into an executive to help operate the new devolved power dealing with the customs union and single market and an unknown amount of potential for both UK and EU firms to use Northern Ireland as a half way house for their business dealings. Do the DUP and hard line BREXITEERS deserve it, I’ll leave that to you…but the ordinary people of Northern Ireland certainly do deserve it.
*Character in Emberto Eco’s Italian and European novel Foucault’s Pendulum
Opinions creatively 