Editorial: The DUP and UUP are right to defend strand one of the political process

There was welcome DUP-UUP agreement yesterday on the need to protect strand one of the three-stranded political processes here.

Strand one is matters which pertain to Northern Ireland. But yesterday’s NI Affairs Committee report which included proposals ostensibly designed to reduce DUP and Sinn Fein clout, but which was in effect a plan to penalise unionists, stupidly blundered into the strands. It recommended the UK, “in close consultation” with the Republic and NI parties, amend Stormont processes such as allowing a supermajority to (in effect) ensure unionists can’t block anything.

It would mean that minority protections are dropped the moment that unionists became a minority – it would mean the UK engaging in flagrant double standards, reforming Stormont the moment unionists seek to utilise minority protection on a matter of major constitutional significance when Sinn Fein was allowed to keep devolution down for three years until it got an Irish language act.

But even if Stormont is reformed, then the reform itself should be a matter for NI, not Ireland. Things are not helped by the way the DUP let Julian Smith and Simon Coveney jointly delve deep into strand one NI matters, such as nurses’ pay, in the 2020 Stormont restoration. The UUP can say that was not its doing, but it did not go into opposition in protest.

It is good, in light of this dismal history, to hear Carla Lockhart and Lord Empey dismiss the bid to mess with strand one. The UUP leader Doug Beattie, however, appeared to call for a referendum when, citing the 1998 plebiscite, he said Stormont reform be put before the people of NI. But what if such a vote scrapped minority protections, which nationalists once cherished and is now vital for unionists? What if this was endorsed in a narrow majority vote which itself overrode the largest of the minorities in most recent elections, unionism?