Have we been DUPed?

After an election campaign in which Theresa May tried to paint Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an IRA sympathiser, the election result is full to the brim with irony as the Tories negotiate a coalition with the DUP, a party with ties to Northern Ireland terrorists. 

Hey, UK voters. How did you vote in the last election? Did you vote for a party whose leader wants to criminalise abortion, even in the case of rape? Did you vote for a party that appointed a climate change denier as an environment minister, flying in the face of science and seriously hampering the world’s attempts to slow down the destruction of our planet? Did you vote for a party whose education committee is chaired by a member of the Caleb Foundation, a creationist organisation that thinks the world is only 10,000 years old?  And does 40% of its activists want creationism taught as science in public schools? Did you vote for a party that has repeatedly blocked moves towards marriage equality, with one senior member telling schoolchildren “Homosexuality is an abomination”? And did you vote for a party whose leader accused Jeremy Corbyn of supporting Ulster terrorists, when she herself had close links with other Ulster terrorists?  No? Well, if you voted Conservative, you helped these people into power anyway.

The Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, is arguably the most politically extreme mainstream party in the UK. Founded in 1971 and standing exclusively in Northern Ireland, they won 10 of the 18 in the province  – their best electoral result ever. Normally, this would be an unremarkable result that didn’t much affect the country as a whole. But as the 2017 General Election saw the Conservatives lose their overall majority – winning only 318 of the 326 seats needed – Prime Minister Theresa May’s new government is dependent on DUP support. But what does this mean for the ordinary UK voter, and for Brexit?

Perhaps the most immediately worrying thing about the DUP is its links with Northern Irish terrorism. After repeatedly trying to smear opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn as at best soft on terrorism and at worst a terrorist sympathiser, in a shocking display of hypocrisy, the Conservatives are now climbing into bed with a political party that has strong historical links with loyalist paramilitary groups. Peter Robinson, the DUP’s leader until last year, was an active member of the terrorist organisation Ulster Resistance,  and has been photographed wearing the paramilitary ‘uniform’ of beret and military fatigues at one of their rallies. According to Metro.co.uk, the DUP ‘also collaborated with other terror groups, including the Ulster Volunteer Force, to smuggle deadly arms into the UK.’  The party has since disowned violence.

The term ’Coalition of Chaos’ was coined by Theresa May to describe a potential Corbyn-led government where Labour was propped up by support from the SNP, Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. But it has since been applied to her own coalition with the DUP.  And May’s Coalition of Chaos could see paramilitary terrorism return to Northern Ireland after almost a decade of peace. The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was a vital step in the peace process, eventually leading to the IRA ending its armed campaign in 2005.  But it has been suggested a DUP/Conservative coalition would break the Agreement’s Impartiality Clause.  If this causes the Agreement to fall apart, the results could be disastrous.

Another possible result of the DUP/Conservative coalition is the potential breakup of the UK. Although the failure of the SNP to build on its massive gains in the 2015 election might have led us to consider Scottish independence off the agenda in the immediate future. But the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson – whose 13 seats north of the border represent a massive gain over the single seat won in 2015 – is working on a deal to break away from the UK Conservative Party and form a separate organisation.  Perhaps this is unsurprising as Ms Davidson is openly gay and engaged to her same-sex partner, and the Conservatives’ coalition partners the DUP has repeatedly blocked marriage equality in Northern Ireland and once backed a campaign called “Save Ulster from Sodomy”.

Although a break between the Scottish and UK Conservatives wouldn’t necessarily be a stepping stone to an independent Scotland, it might well put a second referendum back on the agenda.

And, of course, there’s Brexit, the elephant in the room in any political discussion. The DUP is an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit, but for once, its stance on the subject might actually soften the Conservative’s position. According to DUP leader Arlene Foster, “No-one wants to see a ‘hard’ Brexit, what we want to see is a workable plan to leave the European Union, and that’s what the national vote was about – therefore we need to get on with that…No-one wants to see a hard border, Sinn Fein talk about it a lot, but nobody wants a hard border.”

But perhaps we should leave the last word on the coalition and Brexit to a viral tweet currently doing the rounds. “Looks like we’ll be sending Brussels the Conservative and Unionist Negotiating Team. I hope they can come up with a handy acronym.”

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