DUP dupes have betrayed Irish people north and south  

Posted By: June 22, 2022

IRISH CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING

Distributed to Congress by Irish National Caucus

DUP dupes have betrayed Irish people north and south

 Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, June 22, 2022

 NOW that the British government has made its long-awaited move, let’s assess where the malign mésalliance between the Brextremists in the Conservative party’s ERG and their junior partners, the DUP dupes, has brought us.

It’s not an easy task because the reasons and justifications presented for the actions have been the opposite of the true motivations.

First, the British government or, more accurately, Boris Johnson, signed the protocol only “to get Brexit done”. He had never any intention of honoring it, a fact well documented by his former chief adviser Cummings and members of the ERG who objected to it. They were told it would be changed.

Secondly, the British government claimed the reason for the protocol was to protect the Good Friday Agreement, endangered by leaving the single market and customs union. The truth is that this British government doesn’t give tuppence [two pence] for the GFA, never mentioned it, let alone thought about it during the Brexit campaign, and adopted a Brexit certain to jeopardize the GFA.

They’ve spent the last three years trying to extricate themselves from that conundrum. Their method has been to turn once again to their compliant DUP dupes whose leaders, notably Dame Arlene, initially accepted the protocol as offering ‘opportunities’.

To avoid working the protocol from the outset in 2021, the British egged on the DUP to oppose the protocol and destabilize the north because, all together now, it damaged the GFA – the precise opposite of the truth.

We were then told nonsensically it ‘unbalanced’ the GFA because it upset east-west relations specified in it. Yet Strand 3, the British-Irish Council, says nothing about trade in goods or services. Why would it? All were in the EU.

However, on this spurious basis Donaldson unlawfully ordered his troops out of the North South Ministerial Council to the great satisfaction of the British, evidence of damage. Johnson then began talking about the protocol causing imbalance in the GFA.

Stage by stage the DUP was encouraged to dismantle the GFA to assist the specious British argument that instead of protecting the GFA, the protocol was damaging it and therefore needed renegotiated or removed.

Only a British government as brazenly dishonest as this one could possibly make this argument, which is at odds with all the facts.

The protocol is working. Business and agriculture have prospered as a result of access to the EU single market, as attested by the consternation shown in their reaction to the anti-protocol bill.

Then ERG-DUP conspiracy went pear-shaped. What was supposed to happen was that the British moving to tear up the protocol would bring the DUP back into the assembly and so the British would make the mendacious claim to the EU, “See, the protocol’s the problem and we’ve fixed the Good Friday Agreement by removing the protocol. Now it’s working again.”

They were also planning to use the same argument in the Lords where the bill will be shredded. Of course, they can’t, because the DUP haven’t gone back to Stormont. Nothing’s working. Instead, the British have nothing to show for their illegal action except international contumely.

The DUP are not playing ball because even they know Johnson can’t be trusted.

Both the British and the DUP need a result. The DUP need action to remove the protocol, which just isn’t going to be forthcoming before an Assembly election. The British have to be able to support their absurdly dishonest claim that instead of its stated aim of protecting the GFA, the protocol is damaging it.

Both the GFA and the protocol are damaged. This is where Johnson’s original lie of 2019 to “get Brexit done” has led us.

Johnson has been exposed as cynically manipulating the Good Friday Agreement as a weapon to get rid of the protocol he never intended to operate.

The DUP has connived at his duplicity and in doing so has betrayed the Irish people north and south.