Top Issue 1-2024

24 March 2022

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DUP stance on Assembly Executive hurting unionist families

• Jeffrey Donaldson

As campaigning for May’s assembly election intensifies the DUP and its latest leader Jeffrey Donaldson are confronting one of the biggest challenges faced by unionists since partition, the possibility of Sinn Féin coming out of the May poll as the largest party in the North, Michelle O’Neill being nominated as First Minister and confirmation that the Unionist electoral dominance in the Six Counties is gone.

Faced with this dilemma Donaldson is warning that regardless of the result of the election his party will not re-establish the Executive, which he collapsed in early February, unless the British government bins the so-called ‘Northern Ireland’ Protocol.

Donaldson, has reacted in an all too familiar fashion – appealing to the lowest common denominator: Stop Sinn Féin -rather than working to a strategy of his own.

The reality is that Donaldson and the DUP are a party under pressure. There have also been the internal pressures in the DUP caused by Donaldson standing in the assembly elections even though he is a sitting MP.

One problem for the DUP now is that when Donaldson resigns his Westminster seat, as he must, there will be a by-election and with opinion polls installing the Alliance party’s Sorcha Eastwood as favourite, the DUP faces a huge battle to retain the Westminster seat.

Donaldson has also had to deal with the recent disclosure that he had been approached by Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie about re-joining the party after he lost the 2021 Democratic Unionist leadership contest.

Unionists have made the Protocol the central issue in the upcoming election, highlighting the notion that it undermines the North’s constitutional place in the ‘Union’ which in reality it doesn’t as according to the Good Friday Agreement and the principle of consent the North can only leave the ‘union’ if a majority vote for that in a referendum called by the incumbent British Secretary of State.

• Michelle O’Neill2• Michelle O’Neill

Therein lies the paradox for not only Donaldson but unionists in general. Lead by the DUP a majority of unionists voted for Brexit and as the old saying goes ‘Be careful what you wish for … you might get it’.

For those like Donaldson who backed the Tory hard right and campaigned for a Brexit that would reinforce the border and solidify partition when Britain left the EU customs union and single market what they ended up with was a Brexit that gave them the Protocol, strengthened the all-Ireland economy as well as creating a political climate which re-invigorated the debate around the reunification of the island. It is against this backdrop that the DUP’s dilemma has to be measured.

By paralysing the Executive at a time of soaring inflation, with price hikes in all sectors of the economy creating a cost of living crises Donaldson’s hard-line stance has ensured that Finance Minister Conor Murphy’s budget can’t be approved, a budget that was set to put the North’s Health Service on an even financial footing with a long-term funding plan.

The DUP are actively ignoring the bleak situation their own voters are facing on the ground day to day. Also, a key spending fund of £300 million can’t be released without a directive from the Executive. This means that, among other things, a scheme to provide free school meals during holiday times can’t go ahead.

“These are the latest victims of the DUP’s shameful protocol protest,” says Sinn Féin West Belfast MLA Pat Sheehan.

Pat Sheehan

• Pat Sheehan

Sheehan said, “the Finance Minister set aside funding to tackle holiday hunger for 100,000 children and young people over the next three years, but this allocation cannot be made in the absence of an Executive.

“It is shameful that the DUP is putting narrow electoral concerns ahead of supporting tens of thousands of vulnerable children.”

So, in the run in to polling day in seven weeks’ time we can expect to see Donaldson attend anti-protocol rallies and demonstrations as he ignores the positive contribution real political leadership would give.

By not facilitating a budget that would positively impact on the lives of all Six-County voters, Donaldson is showing that his brand of unionism cares not for Unionist families struggling with the spiralling costs of a growing cost of living crisis.

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