Why a Vote for the DUP/TUV will move us towards a United Ireland…

In my Twitter meanderings there is a constant. Loyalists and immovable Unionists seem to think that I am a Nationalist/Republican, merely because I criticise the negativity and disastrous nature of their policies. I am not a Nationalist, or a Republican, as you will see on this post. I suppose I am Northern Irish, first and foremost, and have friends and colleagues from many backgrounds who see themselves as that too.

The DUP/TUV axis has done more to promote a United Ireland than any other group in my lifetime.

I am old enough to remember life before the Troubles. Like most of my generation we have memories of violence for thirty years. I went to school in the centre of Belfast from ’69 to ’76, at the peak of the IRA bombing campaign. I know people who were killed. Our middle class home was damaged by a bomb. It was just an ordinary life in Northern Ireland.

That violent campaign did not win over a single voter to a United Ireland. It had the opposite effect, and many believe it put back the potential for that happening by two or three generations.

The Good Friday Agreement was a source of relief on all sides. One life saved is worth it, and there were potentially a lot more than that. Those that think otherwise were either not there or have forgotten.

It may be hard for Unionists to believe, but they essentially won. Sinn Fein accepted that Northern Ireland was here to stay in the interim. They still want a United Ireland, and are fully entitled to that position, but they changed. They accepted seats in Stormont, they joined the Policing Board, they took their guns out of our politics.

So now as the 2022 election approaches they are likely to become the largest party.

Why?

Are they winning votes from hardened loyalists? No. Is there such a shift in the demographics from five years ago? No. Are they going to get a lot more seats? No.

So what is happening?

Sinn Fein are sitting back and taking it easy. They are going to win because the Unionists are so inept at politics that they are determined to lose.

Why?

It is 2022 . In the modern world there have been social changes. Young people who are gay in Belfast no longer have to hide in fear of the response from their parents, friends and society. Who still rejects their right to that equality and acceptance? The DUP and TUV. They wave their religious views about in what appears to me to be totally anti-Christian and dictatorial fashion.

Women in our society are belittled every day by the lack of basic rights. The core one being what they can decide for themselves. Again the DUP/TUV, mainly men, believe it is their right to determine how every woman in Northern Ireland should live.

Then we see the promotion of Brexit followed by the opposition to the Protocol. There is the actuality of these positions, but also the sheer hypocrisy of using an all UK vote for one and rejecting it for the other.

We hear so called evidence to back these positions up, yet none are real. The Act of Union, passed in 1800, is their go to position. It is 2022! The attacks on Ireland are seen for what they are by huge swathes of people who know that the only reason we have a Protocol is because of Brexit, not the Irish Government.

Meanwhile Sinn Fein know they do not have to recruit a single new voter. The hard line Unionists are making Northern Ireland an illiberal mess. Sinn Fein sit back and know that their electorate will get out and vote for them, because there has not been one thing done to persuade them that there is a more benign future in Northern Ireland. They would be in a different boat if there had been an Irish Language Act, if Unionists had been proactive in making Northern Ireland a shared home. But they didn’t and it appears they can’t.

But neither are the Unionists parading their protests around winning votes either. I remember friends and family going to the City Hall in Belfast to protest against the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985. I do not know a single person who has or is going to attend the ant-Protocol protests. I am hearing frustration and impatience from people who want this place to be prosperous and successful.

And when we look at the Protocol, I talk to business people from many sectors and sizes. The common position is that with a few tweaks it will be a great step forward for our economy, making us a gateway in both directions, with the potential to make Northern Ireland have a purpose beyond being not Ireland.

So when I attack the DUP/TUV Axis, I am as I have always been. Liberal, trying to look forward, wanting to be inclusive, and to live in a place that is open and fair. I was standing on the steps of the Student’s Union in 1978 to oppose the anti-Gay theatre protest of Ian Paisley. I have pushed back at religion since I left the family church in 1974, after many heated family discussions. I have had many friends and colleagues from here there and everywhere, all of whom have opinions that are diverse and influenced by their experience. I have been right and I have been wrong.

But my life has been in Northern Ireland, I have lived and worked here, built a few businesses, employed lots of people, and been a success and failure. It is home.

I am not voting Sinn Fein or Unionist, I will be voting Alliance, as they are the closest to my beliefs. They are not where I want to be, but at least they are trying hard.