The DUP

[tamthebam]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Can anyone remember a single decision by the ECJ that affected the UK when we were members of the single market? No doubt there were some , but I doubt anyone in Northern Ireland was directly affected. It's a massive red herring, a single market requires rules and a body to interpret them and resolve disputes, as it's an EU single market that NI is being offered privileged access to, disputes can't be settled by a UK court, it's not their market. It's about commercial rules of the single market, not individual rights, tribal loyalties or flags. 

"The European Court of Justice has issued several key decisions about the effect of sickness on statutory holiday rights... Under these ECJ rulings a worker continues to build up statutory annual leave under the Working Time Directive while off sick" 

Law at Work, Labour Research Department Booklets. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Get Bugs in, get the whole island towed out to sea where it belongs

[LongTimeLurker]

16 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

No unionist can accept a deal where EU law applies in one part of the UK, ....

Even when NI and before that Ireland has always had a separate legal system from the rest of the UK just as Scotland does? If it has been OK to use that to push the DUP's more controversial conservative social policies over the years, why is it not OK to use that to give NI a big advantage over the rest of the UK on trade?

[sophia]

GMS reporting that there is no white smoke from the DUP on the Windsor Framework 

[Leith Green]

8 minutes ago, sophia said:

GMS reporting that there is no white smoke from the DUP on the Windsor Framework 

I saw Jeffrey Donaldson on Ch4 news last night, he came across as a bit deluded, this is basically his last moment in the sun before fucking off back to obscurity.

I dont really rate Sunak, but he appears to have painted DUP, ERG and Boris J into a corner. Now the USA, EU and Sunaks cabinet are onside, it would be a brave politician to come out and try and stop this.

Also.............it doesnt need the go ahead of MPs, their vote on this is just window dressing.

[btb]

21 hours ago, welshbairn said:

DUP MP Ian Paisley's wife gets a £20,000 pay rise for part-time role

That'll pay for the family's next trip to the Maldives - oh wait! 

Edited March 1, 2023 by btb

[welshbairn]

Belfast Telegraph opinion piece:

Quote

Brexit stirred a hornet’s nest… and the DUP were stung

To stick or twist at Stormont is latest crisis for party assailed from all sides since 2016 vote

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and the DUP MLAs at Stormont after the election last May

 

Suzanne Breen Sunday Life

Yesterday at 07:30

 

The DUP needs to build a time machine and travel back to 2016 if it’s to escape the unholy mess that it’s trapped in.

With the clock turned back to the Brexit referendum, it could tell every unionist in Northern Ireland to vote to stay in the EU. But that wouldn’t be enough because Remain lost by almost 1.3 million votes.

 

The battle in Britain is key. A time-travelling DUP would need to forget about Farage, Boris and its right-wing Eurosceptic friends. It would have to clamber onto every possible platform with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and all the luvvie Remain campaigners it despises.

Not because it ideologically or intrinsically believes they are right, but because what is about to happen will be the biggest act of self-harm inflicted on unionism and its largest party in decades.

We can argue all day and night about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but one thing is indisputable — it’s been disastrous for the DUP, and for purely pragmatic reasons, the party would have been wise to have energetically opposed it.

The DUP brought down the Executive a year ago and is blocking the Assembly from functioning. In the days when Sinn Fein stood outside the gates with ‘Smash Stormont’ signs, who ever thought it would be a unionist party organising a boycott?

The DUP leadership most definitely does want back into the power-sharing institutions. This time last week, it thought that a path was possible via the much-awaited agreement between London and Brussels.

Born on Monday, the deal was on life-support by Wednesday. No matter how much Sir Jeffrey Donaldson might wish otherwise, it’s hard to see the Windsor Framework in its current form breaking the political deadlock.

The DUP leader’s personal inclination is obvious. Always a pragmatist, Donaldson’s tone was positive after the prime minister’s announcement. He said the party would be embarking on a period of consultation, but his preferred direction of travel was clear — he stressed the deal’s pluses, not its minuses.

Gavin Robinson was also optimistic in the House of Commons. He acknowledged that “on both constitutional harm and the democratic deficit, progress has been made”.

But Jim Allister was fast out of the traps focusing on the agreement’s flaws. Sammy Wilson also zoned in on its negatives, and then came Jamie Bryson and Ian Paisley.

Their Centre for the Union think-tank rejected the Windsor Framework in its report, which was accompanied by an independent legal opinion from former attorney general John Larkin saying the deal was incompatible with the Acts of Union. The PUP said it agreed with that analysis.

Bryson told the News Letter of his objections to the agreement, and Paisley popped up on BBC Northern Ireland’s Nolan Live to say the same.

There have been negative noises from the Orange Order, and UVF leaders were warning they would “wreck the place” and the “streets would be in flames” even before the details of the deal were revealed.

A carnival of reaction and the DUP’s official consultation hadn’t even got off the ground. It shows the range of forces working against Donaldson’s tentative attempts to inch the party to compromise.

The word among DUP MLAs to whom I’ve spoken is that this deal in its current form is dead in the water.

The leadership wants to find a path back to power-sharing, but the party’s seven tests now seem a millstone around its neck to doing that.

Is there anybody in DUP ranks with the craft and guile of former leader Peter Robinson to chart a course that can return the party to Stormont without causing internal civil war and external chaos?

Discussions with Downing Street are continuing. Donaldson will tell Sunak over the coming days and weeks what he believes it would take for his party to sign up.

But the picture is grim and the DUP’s allies aren’t numerous. Former ERG chairmen Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker are enthusiastically pro-deal.

The party might secure the odd tweak here and there, but it knows deep down that major gives are next to impossible.

With a general election to fight next year, Sunak hasn’t the time, energy or inclination to re-open the Tories’ battle with Brussels.

What’s currently on the table looks as good as it gets for Donaldson’s party. What lies ahead? Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Taoiseach Mary Lou McDonald.

The DUP is stuck in a political quagmire. Although its leaders will never admit it, if they could, they’d turn back the clock seven years and do things differently in a heartbeat.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/suzanne-breen/brexit-stirred-a-hornets-nest-and-the-dup-were-stung/1115268632.html

[LongTimeLurker]

Brexit supporters find they don't actually like the consequences of what they voted for:

 

[Michael W]

Sun rises in the morning, Pope is Catholic, Bears shit in the woods, DUP say no. 

World keeps turning. 

[The Golden God]

“Colonial control”

[LongTimeLurker]

The guy who said that is the TUV rather than DUP leader and the DUP will find it difficult to move to a more moderate stance because losing even 5% of the electorate to TUV likely is the end of them as the largest Unionist party.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Westminster has made a sovereign decision that the best way to deal with Brexit is to leave NI semi-detached in EU single market terms. The best way to avoid having this scenario happen was to vote Remain so I am finding it very difficult to work up any sympathy. 

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

The ERG have come out against the Windsor deal as well. It looks like Sunak will have a mini rebellion on his hands tomorrow.

[Iain]

41 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

The ERG have come out against the Windsor deal as well. It looks like Sunak will have a mini rebellion on his hands tomorrow.

Obviously he can get it through with Labour votes, but politically that could be worse for him than not getting it through. Will be interesting.

[O_Kahn]

On 21/03/2023 at 11:57, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

The ERG have come out against the Windsor deal as well. It looks like Sunak will have a mini rebellion on his hands tomorrow.

it was pretty small, just 28 Tories.  It would have gone through even without Labour votes today.

[LongTimeLurker]

Only 29 votes against. There is zero chance this is getting reversed and Liz Truss may well be right that it's also all about making divergence from the EU by the rest of the UK more difficult. Even many Brexit voters can now see that as soft a Brexit as possible is the way to go and the likes of Farage and Rees-Mogg were delusional. NI has a big opportunity to use having a foot in both camps to its advantage. Problem is the electorate needs to stop voting for the constitutional politics obsessed extremes to be able to move forward with that.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Only 29 votes against. There is zero chance this is getting reversed and Liz Truss may well be right that it's also all about making divergence from the EU by the rest of the UK more difficult. Even many Brexit voters can now see that as soft a Brexit as possible is the way to go and the likes of Farage and Rees-Mogg were delusional. NI has a big opportunity to use having a foot in both camps to its advantage. Problem is the electorate needs to stop voting for the constitutional politics obsessed extremes to be able to move forward with that.

I could see the DUP's share of the vote dropping below the 21% they had at the last Stormont election, but the Belfast Agreement seems to guarantee them a veto even if they're overtaken by a combination of Alliance and UUP. Re-writing the Belfast Agreement is likely not an option, ideally Sinn Fein votes would leak away to the SDLP to the point that the middle ground would be a clear majority, but I don't think the BA veto for SF and DUP would evaporate even then. I could well be wrong about this. 

[LongTimeLurker]

The DUP need to still be the largest Unionist party to be in line for the deputy first minister's job and to be able to veto things. If TUV moves beyond 10% they are sunk because that means TUV reaches the quota in Unionist majority areas and starts electing many more MLAs.

At that point most TUV votes no longer transfer to the DUP under STV, but if they turn into a TUV clone to prevent that from happening the DUP will start to bleed support in a similar way to the UUP and possibly even the Alliance party to a certain extent with the same sort of electoral consequences.

No easy answers for the DUP in other words but SF didn't get the catastrophic hard Brexit they needed to push for a Border Poll with some pragmatic former Unionist voters reluctantly deciding UI was now the rational way ahead. NI as a statelet may still have plenty of life in it yet once the electorate adjusts to the new semi-detached reality.

Despite the DUP's moronic approach to the Brexit issue over the past decade or so there is still a rational case to be made for the Union by having a foot in both camps.

Edited March 23, 2023 by LongTimeLurker

[Suspect Device]

A staunch launch for the Together UK Foundation. 

 

 

 

[btb]

Just noticed this

Quote

^{Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill to attend King Charles’s coronation}

Just noticed this news article from The Grauniad earlier in the week - SFs confidence means that they are able to make the sort of gesture which will likely have their hardliners frothing at the mouth, the contrast with the DUP who are in thrall to their own hardliners is stark.

[Thane of Cawdor]

1 hour ago, btb said:

Just noticed this

Just noticed this news article from The Grauniad earlier in the week - SFs confidence means that they are able to make the sort of gesture which will likely have their hardliners frothing at the mouth, the contrast with the DUP who are in thrall to their own hardliners is stark.

Seamus Heaney getting it right (apart from the current passport colour and gender of the monarch). Bit of a sop to sane Unionists without losing Sinn Fein much of their electoral base 

Don't be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast The Queen.