While many organisations and parties right across the political spectrum are debating how the Windsor Framework will play out in practice, all eyes seem keenly focused on the DUP.
Essentially, what the DUP wants to avoid is the public infighting which plagued the Ulster Unionists in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement a quarter of a century ago between the No camp based around the Union First pressure group and the Yes camp based around the Re:Union pressure group.
This current debate, as we are weeks away from the Silver Jubilee of that that Agreement, has become a battle for the heart and soul of the DUP - and precisely who leads it.
On one hand are the modernisers around current boss Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Lagan Valley MP who quit the Ulster Unionists as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. This camp would roughly favour most of the Windsor Framework and would kick start the suspended Assembly in the morning.
On the more militant wing of the DUP, mostly based at Westminster, are the traditional original Paisleyite wing fronted by the late Dr Ian Paisley’s son, Ian Junior, the North Antrim MP.
Throw in the Protestant Loyal Orders (Orange, Black, Apprentice Boys and Independent Orange Order) as well as the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) and the DUP modernisers are facing pressure from a number of sources across the pro-Union spectrum.
My personal preference is a twin-track approach. Let’s get Stormont up and running and the Executive Ministers back at their posts to tackle head-on the cost of living crisis, and at the same time, establish a special committee of MLAs to discuss the out-workings of the Windsor Framework.
But what the pro-Union family needs to consider is a Plan B if the DUP bends to the militants in the party and rejects the Windsor Framework. Does Unionism have an alternative?
Sinn Fein will quite naturally see a DUP rejection of the Framework as a chance to emphasise its call for Joint Authority of Northern Ireland by Dublin and London. But as former Tory PM the late Maggie Thatcher once said - that is out!
Again, the key question is whether Stormont itself could survive a DUP rejection? There are some mutterings the DUP could opt for a ‘half way house’ - agree to a Speaker to keep the Assembly on political life support, but refuse to take its ministerial positions in the hope of gaining more time to negotiate on the parts of the Framework its voter base finds unpalatable.
The real problem is that the DUP has its eye on the 18 May local government elections. Could the party lose votes to Jim Allister’s TUV, or see swing votes to the UUP, or even protest votes to Alliance? Indeed, could the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris (at the behest of PM Sunak) call the DUP’s bluff and implement a snap Stormont poll?
I am a firm supporter of the need for a fully functioning devolved Assembly. My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, represented North Antrim in the Assembly from 1998 to 2011 and was the UUP’s representative on the Stormont Commission for that period of time.
He was one of the backroom team which helped bring the Good Friday Agreement into reality, and prior to the Assembly, he represented North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue from 1996-98 and was UUP Chief Whip in that Forum.
Whilst I miss my dad terribly, in one way I am glad he is not here to see the absolute mess which the current Assembly finds itself it.
Perhaps Heaton-Harris’s role is to create legislation at Westminster which would allow those parties who wish to operate devolution to enter the Assembly, elect a Speaker and take up Executive roles.
Such a radical move in the situation where the DUP as a party rejects the Windsor Framework. After all, if Heaton-Harris can bring about legislation to extend the deadline for an Assembly election to January 2024, he can create a legal situation for pro-Assembly parties to kick-start devolution.
That will almost inevitably lead to a realignment within Unionism, only this time into pro-assembly and anti-assembly groupings. On one hand, you could see a merger between the UUP and those within the DUP who want devolution to work (even if the DUP as a group rejects the Framework), and on the other hand, the militant DUP, TUV and elements of loyalism who totally reject the Framework.
If Stormont cannot be saved, devolution will be mothballed for at least a generation. Perhaps Heaton-Harris may wish to consider the so-called ‘Molyneaux Solution’ once favoured by the late James Molyneaux when he was UUP boss.
This was to have the Northern Ireland Office staffed by Northern Ireland elected MPs (provided those MPs took their seats at Westminster). In such a scenario, the current crop of DUP, SDLP and Alliance MPs would take over the various roles at the NIO under Direct Rule with Sir Jeffrey obviously the firm favourite to be the new Northern Ireland Secretary of State.
This obviously would create a huge problem for Sinn Fein, which still operates its outdated abstentionist policy of not taking its House of Commons seats. If the Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs can take their seats, why can’t Sinn Fein. After all, Sinn Fein does take its seats in the Assembly, the Dail and Europe.
With Unionists heading off to the United States for the traditional St Patrick’s Day celebrations, no doubt the Biden administration with its nationalist agenda will be heaping more pressure on the DUP.
Mind you, given Biden’s Vietnam-style retreat from Afghanistan, the last thing Northern Ireland needs is a politically lame-duck US President trying to tell us how to run a country!
But Stormont or no Stormont, deal or no deal, one element must be maintained - the gun and bomb must be eradicated from Irish politics. Dissident republicans have already shown their unwillingness go adhere to this; the last thing Ireland (north and south) needs is for a militant loyalist faction to go on the rampage over the Windsor Framework.
Sensible and level-headed political rhetoric will be required in the coming days.
 |
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
No comments