Being anti-protocol won’t improve living standards
Posted By: April 25, 2022
IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING
Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus
“The DUP and TUV did not sleepwalk into their enthusiastic support for Brexit. They deliberately saw it as a way of destroying or undermining the Good Friday Agreement.”
“The above pull-out quote from the article below will spell out to the U.S. Congress the essence of DUP policy.”
—Fr. Sean McManus
Being anti-protocol won’t improve living standards
Tom Kelly. Irish News. Belfast. Monday, April 25, 2022
INFLATION is rising, living costs are soaring, wages are stagnant, the health service is broken and taxes have never been higher. Filling up the lawn mower is now more costly than a night in a bed and breakfast.
The public is worried about the future and rightly so, as making ends meet becomes harder, not just for the most vulnerable in society but for the working poor and middle-income earners too. Economic reality is biting into people’s pockets.
And yet, across swathes of Northern Ireland, there are groups of mainly middle-aged and older men marching with toy town bands to the depressing beat of yesteryear.
They are bolstered by puffed-up, uniformed bandsmen who look as if they were the cast of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard.
It’s all quite Ruritanian.
Speakers climb on the backs of lorries or huddle around union flag-draped tables in small Orange halls and try to outdo each other in self-righteous anger against the NI Protocol and the Good Friday Agreement.
Of course, they are little more than echo chambers.
It’s as if someone has taken the script and cast of Dad’s Army and staged it in the Ulster Hall 1912.
To an onlooker, these events may seem simultaneously sinister and silly. But they have a purpose. They are intended to shore up a failed political ideology, as much as Northern Ireland’s brand of political unionism can be described as an ideology.
Unionist people deserve better than to endure this ‘death rattle’ from leaders who have let them down. Being anti-protocol won’t improve living standards, provide economic prosperity or maintain our hard-won peace.
The elephant in the room is still invisible to these naysayers.
Power-sharing is here to stay. The NI Protocol (albeit amended) is too.
To dump the protocol would unravel the trade agreement with the EU and would lead to even higher food prices across the entire UK and leave Northern Ireland without the benefits of EU access.
Political unionism seems determined to follow a policy which would impoverish people in Northern Ireland. By any standards of political leadership this is rather remarkable and unique. No wonder economically literate unionists are opting for the UUP or Alliance.
The DUP and TUV did not sleepwalk into their enthusiastic support for Brexit. They deliberately saw it as a way of destroying or undermining the Good Friday Agreement.
The GFA is far from perfect – no democratic system of government ever is. But the Belfast Agreement does work, even with its clunky architecture.
Every day I glance at the book Lost Lives and remember how many lives have been saved since 1998. Only the naive, the gullible or the downright belligerent would want to turn the clock back.
The dissident republicans issuing death threats last week are relics of an evil past. They too can’t see the future, blinkered as they are by empty rhetoric and redundant shibboleths.
It is hard to imagine Sir Jeffrey Donaldson actually wants to spend his Friday evenings in Carrickfergus with the TUV and fringe loyalists. He is more used to the refined assembly of Westminster than Whitehead.
But Sir Jeffrey is so far down the road, it’s too late to turn back before May’s elections. Plus, the DUP needs the vital transfers from loyalists to take many of the final seats in contention within unionist areas.
Donaldson should remember the fate of his one-time colleague, David Trimble.
Swimming with political piranhas is rarely recommended.
Trimble’s jig down the Garvaghy road with Ian Paisley was a hollow and short-lived victory. Paisley didn’t share power with other unionists – he devoured them.
Sir Jeffrey needs to ditch his ‘useful’ allies once the election is over. Frankly, it’s what they fear most and that fear should be realized for them.
