Paranoid DUP blind to the economic advantages of Brexit deal
Posted By: November 21, 2018
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, November 21, 2018.
A month ago in the House of Commons, DUP MP David Simpson accepted that no deal would, ‘decimate’ the lamb industry in the north.
He said, ‘if tariffs of 14 percent or 15 percent are introduced that would decimate the Northern Ireland lamb industry overnight, given that we export 90 percent of our lamb.’ Simpson went on to say, ‘If the right deal is not there we will have major problems with our industry and employment.’
Well, the right deal is there but the Brexit fanatics in the DUP will not admit it. They prefer to talk nonsense about the ‘constitutional implications’, of which there are none. In fact, Article 1 of the Irish protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement unnecessarily states, ‘This Protocol respects the territorial integrity of the UK’, and reiterates the ‘principle of consent’ even though that principle doesn’t apply to anything other than the abolition of the British border in Ireland. Unionists have always deliberately confused the idea of consent to constitutional change with their belief in a non-existent requirement for their consent to any change whatsoever.
Given the antics of the DUP in recent days, it’s no wonder Lady Sylvia Hermon says: ‘I would be very surprised if I were ever to find myself on the same page as Sammy Wilson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.’ Indeed she would because the DUP MPs have entered the puzzle factory with the weirdos and nutters of the far right in the Conservative party. These are the Tory backwoods MPs a senior Conservative described as, ‘all mad, swivel-eyed loons’, a description repeated by the climate change minister, Claire Perry, last year when she called them ‘the swivel-eyed few’. As you know, that’s the natural home for the DUP MPs.
What they’re doing at present is looking a gift horse in the mouth. The SNP are raging at the deal. Why? Quite simply, as several SNP MPs and members of the Scottish government have said, the deal gives The North a distinct competitive advantage. Business in The North, under its terms, will have the right to unfettered export to both the EU and GB. If you were sitting in a boardroom in Boston or Beijing looking for a European base for investment in manufacturing would you pick Scotland or The North in those circumstances? The truth is what the EU has awarded The North is special status by any other name, something Sinn Féin latched onto eighteen months ago.
The EU can afford to do that because The North is so small, with what is laughingly called a GDP, but is really a smaller sum than many multi-nationals’ turnovers. For a couple of years GB is also included in special arrangements but then, because it’s such a big economy and because Britain wants to leave the customs union and single market, The North will retain special status, or its backstop status, call it what you will. It’s an extraordinary gift, conceded largely because of the DUP’s whingeing, but now the DUP rejects it.
Instead, in full knowledge that they will impoverish their own supporters and the people of The North, the DUP in their asinine obstinacy insist that their crazy interpretation of the UK must trump the economic advantage handed to this place on a plate.
In response to David Simpson’s admission last month about the DUP destroying sheep farming, Campbell Tweed, former UFU chair and a man with an upland farm of 3,000 ewes in north Antrim, appealed to the DUP. He said, they ‘must bear in mind the commercial interests of Northern Ireland plc and be pragmatic.’
If the piffle Deputy Dawds and Sammy Wilson have spouted in recent days about no deal better than a bad deal is anything to go by, it will not only be the lamb industry but the Gadarene swine in the Tory party the DUP will be joining as they accelerate over the cliff.
This blind paranoia and arrogance, defying every organization representative of industry, business, and commerce here telling them to have sense, and despite the fact that they represent a political minority in The North, demonstrates beyond peradventure that the DUP is led by people who are strangers to rational thought. But you knew that.
A month ago in the House of Commons, DUP MP David Simpson accepted that no deal would, ‘decimate’ the lamb industry in the north.
He said, ‘if tariffs of 14 percent or 15 percent are introduced that would decimate the Northern Ireland lamb industry overnight, given that we export 90 percent of our lamb.’ Simpson went on to say, ‘If the right deal is not there we will have major problems with our industry and employment.’
Well, the right deal is there but the Brexit fanatics in the DUP will not admit it. They prefer to talk nonsense about the ‘constitutional implications’, of which there are none. In fact, Article 1 of the Irish protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement unnecessarily states, ‘This Protocol respects the territorial integrity of the UK’, and reiterates the ‘principle of consent’ even though that principle doesn’t apply to anything other than the abolition of the British border in Ireland. Unionists have always deliberately confused the idea of consent to constitutional change with their belief in a non-existent requirement for their consent to any change whatsoever.
Given the antics of the DUP in recent days, it’s no wonder Lady Sylvia Hermon says: ‘I would be very surprised if I were ever to find myself on the same page as Sammy Wilson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.’ Indeed she would because the DUP MPs have entered the puzzle factory with the weirdos and nutters of the far right in the Conservative party. These are the Tory backwoods MPs a senior Conservative described as, ‘all mad, swivel-eyed loons’, a description repeated by the climate change minister, Claire Perry, last year when she called them ‘the swivel-eyed few’. As you know, that’s the natural home for the DUP MPs.
What they’re doing at present is looking a gift horse in the mouth. The SNP are raging at the deal. Why? Quite simply, as several SNP MPs and members of the Scottish government have said, the deal gives The North a distinct competitive advantage. Business in The North, under its terms, will have the right to unfettered export to both the EU and GB. If you were sitting in a boardroom in Boston or Beijing looking for a European base for investment in manufacturing would you pick Scotland or The North in those circumstances? The truth is what the EU has awarded The North is special status by any other name, something Sinn Féin latched onto eighteen months ago.
The EU can afford to do that because The North is so small, with what is laughingly called a GDP, but is really a smaller sum than many multi-nationals’ turnovers. For a couple of years GB is also included in special arrangements but then, because it’s such a big economy and because Britain wants to leave the customs union and single market, The North will retain special status, or its backstop status, call it what you will. It’s an extraordinary gift, conceded largely because of the DUP’s whingeing, but now the DUP rejects it.
Instead, in full knowledge that they will impoverish their own supporters and the people of The North, the DUP in their asinine obstinacy insist that their crazy interpretation of the UK must trump the economic advantage handed to this place on a plate.
In response to David Simpson’s admission last month about the DUP destroying sheep farming, Campbell Tweed, former UFU chair and a man with an upland farm of 3,000 ewes in north Antrim, appealed to the DUP. He said, they ‘must bear in mind the commercial interests of Northern Ireland plc and be pragmatic.’
If the piffle Deputy Dawds and Sammy Wilson have spouted in recent days about no deal better than a bad deal is anything to go by, it will not only be the lamb industry but the Gadarene swine in the Tory party the DUP will be joining as they accelerate over the cliff.
This blind paranoia and arrogance, defying every organization representative of industry, business, and commerce here telling them to have sense, and despite the fact that they represent a political minority in The North, demonstrates beyond peradventure that the DUP is led by people who are strangers to rational thought. But you knew that.
