I admit it: I have never had a lot of time for the DUP. Ignoring the other issues what I really do not like is their hypocrisy.
Let me provide an simple example of this. I have, for years, opposed the devolution of corporation tax to Northern Ireland. I cannot count the number of times I have broadcast in the issue on the BBC in Northern Ireland. I have also appeared in the Northern Ireland press on the issue. It made me something of a regular on the Nolan Show for a while because so few local politicians were willing to oppose the alignment of the Northern Ireland corporation tax rate with that in the Republic, so I had to appear instead.
And let's be quite clear about this: the DUP retains that commitment now. The MyDUP website says:
For years, business organisations campaigned for the need to devolve Corporation Tax and setting a lower rate by Government. It has been described as a potential game-changer for our economy. While other parties had second thoughts and gave up on achieving it, the DUP persisted and we have now secured the power, with a date set for lowering the tax in 2018 to a rate of 12.5%.
And why the odd choice of a 12.5% tax rate? Precisely because that would bring Northern Ireland into line with the Republic. There is literally no other explanation that can be provided.
And that is my point: in this case the DUP campaigned persistently (their own word) for regulatory alignment with the Republic. And yet, yesterday, they objected to a Brexit deal precisely because that would require regulatory alignment with the Republic.
In other words, when it suits the DUP they want alignment and to be apart from the rest of the UK, and when it does not suit them they don't. That, in my book, is a definition of hypocrisy, and that is precisely why in my opinion the DUP are just a bunch of hypocrites who are as Irish and as separate as they like when they want to be, and as British as they want when it suits them.
And that is why we should ignore them now.
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They also deny a lot of rights to British Citizens in Ulster, which are denied to British Citizens in Scotland, England and Wales: The right to same sex marriage and the right to abortion in particular. Mrs Foster even wrote to the Scottish Govt. to try to get them to prevent LGBT couples from marrying there.
Party funding is not transparent in their corner of the world and they appear to maintain links with paramilitary groups. They have enticed mobs to take to the streets in the recent past, particularly in the flag dispute.
Their ostensible justification for torpedoing the deal is that the UK voted to leave. This is down-right dishonest because 56% of their constituency voted to remain in the EU. Whatever happened to standing up for your voters’ wishes?
I am have both British and Irish Citizenship. I applied for the latter after the vote to leave the EU. I consider myself Scottish first and foremost, born and raised in Scotland. My ancestors are from Northern Ireland and I lived in London for 12 years.
What is regulatory alignment ?
It will apply to all the UK
They are making it up, by the hour.
What next, follow the rules without a say. Great democracy.
Exactly. A fax democracy, like Norway, taking rules but not participating in making them.
“Exactly. A fax democracy, like Norway, taking rules but not participating in making them.”
Is THAT what they meant about ‘regaining sovereignty’: being told what to do by a ‘higher authority’?
Suddenly it all makes sense. 🙂
They are bullies, holding everyone to ransom. Plus guess what, they earned a Billion.
Not bad.
That £1bn bribe was not the subject of a referendum, nor was it in anyone’s manifesto.
They should pay vat on the billion pounds
Some might substitute the word “gangsters” for “bullies”.
For years the British government and the EU have given regional development aid to Northern Ireland. If NI stayed in the single market / Customs union and England, Scotland and Wales did not, many companies might relocate to the province and re-invigorate the local economy.
If that is true, it is a telling comment on the wisdom of the UK leaving the SM/CU.
Even labour seem to be of this opinion now, according to the Guardian on-line this afternoon.
“what I really do not like is their hypocrisy” – in fairness to the DUP – they buy it wholesale – from the Tories.
Or as the late great Peter Cook observed on the Clive James show all those years ago:
“Ah yes, hypocrisy, the vaseline of political intercourse”.
I’m just looking forward to one of the Brexit mob complaining that the DUP is endangering the process because it wants to have its cake and eat it.
I’m confident I won’t be disappointed if I’m patient.
I’m with you on this one. The Brexiteers will dump the DUP in a flash if it looks like they might scupper their escape from Europe!
Chris O’Dee says:
December 5 2017 at 10:50 pm
“I’m with you on this one. The Brexiteers will dump the DUP in a flash if it looks like they might scupper their escape from Europe!”
It looks awfully like that was exactly what May was doing the other day. Totally ignoring their existence until she was reminded.
The idea, frequently aired, that this Irish border situation can be resolved by stringing the right words together so they are meaningless seems to me is strictly for the birds.
English Brexiteers don’t give a toss what happens in Ireland. Tories never really did until the IRA started attacking the decision makers rather than the general public, whom the Tories also don’t give a toss about.