Fergus Finlay: DUP yet to realise Tories never had its best interests at heart

'Circling around each other like the two lads in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, doing as much self-harm, creating as much collateral damage' — FERGUS FINLAY on the DUP and the Conservatives

Boris Johnson meets with then DUP leader Arlene Foster at Stormont in 2019. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

What an odd pair they are. It’s not even clear how they became a pair in the first place, but there they are, supposed to be allies and partners, and instead circling around each other like the two lads in 'The Banshees of Inisherin'. Doing as much self-harm as in the movie, creating as much collateral damage.

If they trusted each other once, those days are long gone. Now, every time either of them has anything to say, they spend their whole time muttering about imminent betrayal.

Just like the lads in Banshees, if they go on as they’re going, they’ll finish each other off — and quite possibly the one thing they claim to have in common.

I’m not talking about the main characters in Martin McDonagh’s weird film (I could do a whole column listing all the reasons I hated it, but that would be another day’s work). I’m talking about the Tories and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

It’s not entirely clear to me how the DUP came to see the Tories as a partner in the first place. Within the written constitution of the Tory Party, for what it’s worth, there is a designated place in the leadership of the party for the Conservative parties of Scotland and of Wales. But there’s no role for any party in Northern Ireland.

The idea seems to be that they are allies, but not family. You have to live in Britain for that (and probably not be seen as a Paddy despite your Britishness).

Then deputy first minister Martin McGuinness and first minister Ian Paisley on a joint visit to the New York Stock Exchange in 2007. The singular genius of the peace process was to bring representatives of the political extremes together. File picture: Stuart Ramson/AP

It’s also the case that, for most of my adult life, the Tory pal on our island was the Official Unionist Party, and not the DUP at all (the DUP was a sort of provo wing of unionism, with religion and a dose of bigotry and menace).

The relationship between unionism and toryism was testy and poisonous even then — they loudly proclaimed their distrust of Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, and John Major. For their part, the Tory leaders of the time continuously asserted the primacy of the union, while secretly telling anyone who would listen how exasperated they were with Jim Molyneux and David Trimble (easy enough people to be exasperated with, in fairness).

Back then, the DUP was everyone’s enemy. Ian Paisley was, literally and figuratively, outside the gate. He had only one name for Conservative Party leaders, and he routinely bellowed it at the top of his voice from every platform he occupied: “Traitors!”

That all changed, of course, when the Anglo-Irish peace process of the 1990s ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement. 

The singular genius of that process was that it turned the politics of the previous 20 years on its head.

From the moment the Troubles began in the late 1960s, all political development was based on the notion that it would be possible to marginalise people on the extremes — loyalists, provos, and hardliners of all kinds — and strengthen the centre ground of politics in the hope that extremes would become redundant.

The Anglo-Irish peace process was essentially based on the premise that the extremes, who had caused the problem, had to be seen as the solution. Peace was made possible by enabling them to participate to the full. It wasn’t long before that logic led to Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness sitting side-by-side in charge of the government of Northern Ireland, while lifelong democrats clenched their teeth and offered it up for peace.

But the tension has never left. My old boss Dick Spring, who himself played a huge part in the peace process, used to say that the ceasefires took violence out of the conflict. But they didn’t end the conflict. Since the first collapse of the Assembly, party point-scoring has become a way of life in Northern Ireland.

Nothing has done more damage than the party games played by the Tories, and by Boris Johnson in particular, with the game of Brexit threatening to destroy them both. 

John Tenniel's illustration of ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ as they prepare to devour the oysters they purport to protect in 'Through The Looking Glass' by Lewis Carroll. Far from being unionists' allies, Tory Brexiteers care not one whit about them or the North.

Make no mistake, Brexit was a game to Johnson. He was interested only in one thing, the destruction of his political predecessors and his own ascent to greatness. Because of the great duplicity of Brexit, he has done untold and lasting damage to the country he professes to love. At least it must now be clear to everyone but a few eejits that the only thing Boris Johnson has ever loved is Boris Johnson.

Somehow or other, the DUP fell in love with him. He must, it seems, be a powerful wooer (is that a word?) More than any other party in Northern Ireland, and against all common sense, they lined up behind him, and ended up campaigning against the interests of the people they claimed to lead.

Everyone with a titter of wit knew that the North would be in serious trouble if Britain left the EU and Northern Ireland ended up as that unique entity — the only place in Europe with a delicate but enduring peace process, a land border with the EU, and sovereign allegiance to an economic “third country”. Boris knew that and didn’t care. Whatever promises he made he had no intention of keeping.

He ended up negotiating a protocol he claimed to hate and, in the meantime, the DUP lost ground to Sinn Féin in an Assembly election. So now the people of the North have been let down again and again by their own leadership.

When history is written, the only thing that will be clear is that the only sovereign powers that never lost sight of Northern Ireland’s real interests were the Irish government and the EU. On the other side of the coin, every step taken by Johnson and the DUP has only had the effect of weakening the union they’re so passionate about. Isn’t history full of ironies?

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

A columnist in one of the English newspapers at the weekend, writing about the never-ending lies of Boris Johnson, described two of his few remaining defenders, the absurd Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries, as the “Arsenic and Old Lace” of English politics — a reference to an old play and film about very genteel serial killers. 

I thought it was one of the funniest political one-liners I’d come across in a long time. 

But every time I think of the Tories and the DUP, and the way their actions and their tribalism seem to almost cannibalise everything they pretend to stand for, I can think only of Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’. 

It’s a poem about two greedy creatures who enticed some foolish oysters to the far end of the beach and then had a feast while pretending to be the protectors of their victims. When they were finished, the carpenter asked should they all be heading homes again.

But, as the poem concludes, “answer came there none. And this was scarcely odd, because they’d eaten every one”.

There is finally a real chance for the DUP to grow up and get stuck in to the government of Northern Ireland. But if they insist on playing the silly games that started with their disastrous flirtation with Johnson and Brexit, they’ll end up being utterly irrelevant.

Just like him.