Why not let the DUP run the whole of the British government? At least they’ve got a plan

Posted By: October 12, 2018

The Independent. London.October 11, 2018.


The Democratic Unionists know how to be a small party propping up the Conservatives, don’t they? The Northern Irish Protestant party is reportedly threatening to break their partnership and vote against the Budget if they don’t like the government’s Brexit deal.

And they’re getting more confident each day – so next week they’ll insist the Budget is expressed through the medium of flute-playing and the part about projected growth rates will be made on a march through the Catholic church next to Victoria station. As the priest says, “Excuse me, your drums are drowning out the midnight mass”, Philip Hammond will have to sing: “There’s a freeze in the sum you pay for petrol tax/ But the following changes are decreed/ There’s no VAT on bowler hats/ But a grand on a rosary bead.” 

Analysts will try to work out which sections of the Budget were influenced by the DUP, such as the part that goes: “Inflation is likely to rise to 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter, for which there is an obvious explanation, which is that it’s God’s will. Because who are we to interfere in the numbers of the Lord? But to compensate, a new homosexuality duty will be introduced, of seven pence a thrust, which should raise £9m a week to boost the economy.”

Many leading DUP politicians are creationists, so it’s only fair if they get to include a few paragraphs, such as making it a sin to yawn on a Sunday, with fines that pay for the cost of burning any books that say there were dinosaurs.

And instead of dull press conferences, the Bank of England will be asked to announce all future changes in interest rates by painting them on a mural in East Belfast with someone on a white horse.

This is taking place because the outcome of the last election was a complicated picture, with no one party or set of ideas proving to represent the majority of the population. So it’s heartening that someone’s worked out what the country was really voting for, which was to be run by Presbyterian creationists who think the Pope is the Antichrist and Great Britain was made by God on a Wednesday just before he invented the moon.

EU’s Barnier meets Northern Ireland’s DUP leader Arlene Foster in Brussels

But then the Tories hit a new disaster, which is that even some of their own side are complaining about the new system of paying benefits, called universal credit.

This scheme will pay out £3bn less than the old one, but the government insists this won’t affect the poor. This must be because the poor aren’t very good with money, which is why they’re poor so that they won’t notice an insignificant sum like £3bn.

Some people have suggested this will have a devastating effect, but they’ve been accused of vicious scaremongering, and not having a clue what’s going on. It’s possible this is true in some cases because one of the people who has said this is Esther McVey, the Conservative minister responsible for the scheme.

Apparently, she told cabinet colleagues that half of the lone parents and about two-thirds of working-age couples with children would lose the equivalent of £2,400 a year.

But the poor are too busy to notice little sums like that until some do-gooder points out to them they’ve had their furniture repossessed, and their kids have fainted during school.

Where universal credit has been tried, it’s been a huge success and families who receive it have been out of their house much more often than before. Admittedly this is because wherever universal credit has been introduced the number of people relying on food banks has doubled, but they’re getting out of the house and that’s the main thing.

Iain Duncan Smith, who was responsible for coming up with this scheme, insists it will encourage people to fund their own lives, in the same way, he does. Because he lives in a Tudor mansion he didn’t have to pay for, and if these poor people made an effort, they too could be in a family with inherited wealth, and as a country, we can’t subsidize those people who are simply too lazy to inherit.

Despite outside agitators such as the Conservative minister for it, the scheme has been introduced smoothly and with barely a problem, with only eight delays, and a proposed date for being complete only seven years after the original one. But when it does come in, it should put a stop to these people who think they can go through life being inefficient and late.

Ex-Conservative prime minister John Major has suggested the scheme will bring disaster, ex-Conservative chancellor George Osborne uses his newspaper to launch daily attacks on his ex-colleagues, and the current cabinet is split so many ways it must be impossible for any of them to remember who they’re supposed to be attacking for what reason.

Chris Grayling will go on Newsnight and say, “Michael Gove is scum, utter filth – oh hang on, no I’m on his side today – can we start again?”

And Boris Johnson is so brazen now that you expect him to sneak in behind Theresa May during her answers in Prime Minister’s Questions and drive around the Commons in an industrial digger, releasing swarms of bees.

Maybe we should let the Democratic Unionists run the government completely for a week. At least they seem to know what they want.