NI Dec 22 Assembly Election

UK came up with, proposed and agreed the Protocol and gave Boris a massive majority.

Accept the democratic will here? You don’t need to like it or ever agree but you do need to show true democratic ability.

UK also negotiated and agreed the WA, including the NIP. The NIP, in fact, was a feature the UK asked for; the EU was quite happy with a WA which didn't include the NIP and which treated the whole UK on a uniform basis, which presumably you also would have been happy with.

As others point out, the WA (including NIP) was democratically endorsed by the UK electorate in 2019, who give the Tories an 80-seat majority on a manifesto to ratify and implement the WA they had already negotiated and signed.

I appreciate that you take the view that the NIP alters NI's place in the Union, without NI's consent, in a way contrary to to the GFA. But you have to appreciate that others - including, inconveniently, the UK courts - take the view that it doesn't. So this can't be stated as a brute fact, and the DUP can't demand as of right that matters proceed as though their view about this is correct and other views are incorrect; they have to actually persuade people of this.

And here they face an almost insurmountable problem, I think. The UK political establishment, and in particular that part of it which the DUP has aligned itself with, values hard Brexit more than it values the health of the Union. For practical reasons, Brexit on terms that results in a hard land border in Ireland is not an option for the UK. The choice is between Brexit for the whole UK on terms that don't require a hard Border - i.e. soft Brexit - or Brexit with NI being treated differently to avoid a hard border in Ireland. For the DUP's "friends" in Westminster, that's an easy choice.

Obviously, the hard Brexiters in the UK government will never accept that their Brexit terms amount to a change in NI's constitutional status that the GFA forbids without NI's consent. NI doesn't want hard Brexit, and giving NI a veto over the only practically attainable form of hard Brexit is tantamount to giving up on hard Brexit altogether. They're not going to do that, and the DUP will not persuade them to.

So there is no "with one bound he was free!" move open to the DUP here. In the medium term, after a change of government in the UK, a rapprochement between the EU and the UK may open up the way to significantly alleviating the impact of the protocol, and even removing parts of it. Complete renegotiation/removal might be possible in the long term.

But in the short term — i.e. before the next election — very little of that can happen. The DUP's position - no devolved institutions while the Protocol remains - therefore seems to me to be against their own interests. It effectively amounts to no devolved institutions indefinitely, and that's not a position acceptable to Westminster, Dublin or the large majority in NI. The effect is not to put pressure on for the fundamental renegotiation of the Protocol, which Westminster very much does not want, but for the fundamental renegotiation of the GFA, so that it does not allow the DUP to collapse the institutions indefinitely against the wishes of the large majority. The GFA was negotiated and put in place without DUP agreement; changes to it could too.

The DUP's best strategy here would be to play the long game, agitating against the effects of the Protocol that they find objectionable, but awaiting the next UK general election which will almost certainly return a government more willing to adopt positions that will allow those effects to be ameliorated, and at least parts of the Protocol to be renegotiated. Trying to force the issue in the meantime risks doing even more damage to their own position than they have already done.

‘Effects of the Protocol’ they already have to lie about.

They are between a rock and a hard place and they put themselves there on their own.

Of course you have the right to fight it, from here until the cows come home.

What you can’t do is hold people to ransom who cannot do anything about the WA your government signed and sealed.

Take your fight to where it belongs - Westminster.

Of course they have the right. The issue is not whether they have the right, but whether the way they are exercising that right at present is either wise or effective, from their own point of view. (The answer, on both counts, is "no". They're making a complete hames of this from every possible point of view. If I were a unionist I would find it both profoundly depressing and buttock-clenchingly embarrassing.)

The difference is SF are NOT holding the people to ransom by abstaining,

By all means abstain to your heart's content, what you cannot do is remove governance from the people over something they cannot change.

They can abstain...nobody stopping them. But not at the expense of people who have no power to give them what they want.

Again: SF pulled out of the Assembly/Executive over issues the assembly could sort but wouldn't. The DUP did it over issues the Assembly/Executive have no power to solve and over issues they backed and endorsed themselves.

Parties 'walk' from government ALL the time.

What they don't do is hold people to ransom to try to get concessions those people cannot give.

There is no equivalence here, no matter how much you want to obliquely support DUP belligerence.

P.S. Reviews of agreements are always welcome. The GFA has been added to several times and yet still is not fully implemented.

They either have the right not to take their seats, or they don't.

Arguing over the merits of their reasons is a completely different thing. I believe neither SF nor the DUP have been right to block the Stormont Assembly. I also believe that the right of the SF and DUP children to behave in that manner should be removed by the adults in government in Dublin and London.

You won't argue over the merits because like the JBritish you feel the need to shore up belligerent Unionism in order to try and stall the inevitable.

You don't have the right to hold people to ransom over something they can do nothing about. Discuss.

From someone who is unable to distinguish between the old IRA, PIRA and new IRA, the accusation of not comparing like with like runs more than a little hollow.

I have said already that both SF and the DUP were wrong to collapse Stormont. At one level, when you look at the issue and the length of time, it could be argued that SF were worse, but to me both were wrong.

What?

It is blatantly undemocratic but it can’t be admitted here.

Can you say "false dichotomy"? No, I'm not implying that at all. The fact that you need to characterise my position in this way is revealing.

Here is what is wrong with your point.

The DUP used the PcC in a way it wasn't designed for. I.E. Undemocratically. That is, they were blocking rights in a way that halted the GFA and it's ancillary agreements.

The Executive could fix that at the stroke of a pen or a raising of an arm. The DUP undemocratically would not allow that.

The DUP refused every deal on the table in relation to the WA. When the UK proposed the Protocol they backed it and supported it, the UK agreed the Protocol and the late Queen signed it into law. Then for some reason they changed their mind (many say, because a SF First Minister looked imminent) and rejected it and lied about it's effects.

The Executive have no power whatsoever to change the agreement between the UK and the EU but they brought it down and proceeded to use that as a ransom. Completely undemocratically, as the Executive have NO power to change the agreement.