Ben Lowry: London will never treat Sinn Fein as harshly as it will do unionists

Some pro-Union people think that such talk demoralises people who are of a unionist outlook, and gives Irish nationalism a psychological advantage.

It is only fair therefore to point out that the outgoing government of Boris Johnson is not merely one that betrays unionists, but was in fact strikingly unionist in various respects (as indeed were, in their own ways, the governments of Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and yes, despite the Irish Sea border, even Theresa May).

Mr Johnson’s premiership began to push back against some consensus notions among the chattering classes in Northern Ireland that have not been challenged since 1998, such as the idea that in due to devolution the UK government did not need a visible presence in NI.

He resisted pressure from the US President Joe Biden, at the G7 at Cornwall in June 2021, over the need for full implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

His government acted unilaterally on legacy, to the outrage of Dublin, when it became clear that dealing with the past had become hopelessly lopsided against the UK state, and was leading to homicide trials of low-level veterans for single shootings, that lacked pre-meditation, while IRA leaders seemed to enjoy a de facto amnesty for decades of pre-meditated terrorism.

It appointed junior ministers, Lord Caine and Conor Burns, who were openly unionist, and broke with the tradition of Northern Ireland Office (NIO) neutrality and weakness in the face of partisan pro nationalist lobbying from Irish officials.

And of course it acted unilaterally to reform the protocol that Boris Johnson agreed in 2019.

Why did the government do these things? I think the answers to that are many. A possible reason (that we might never establish) is that Boris Johnson felt guilt over doing something he had said no prime minister would ever do, creating a major internal UK barrier in the Irish Sea. I suspect there might be such guilt because Mr Johnson is a complex figure, almost cartoonishly selfish and unprincipled yet also very intelligent and thoughtful (as readers of his columns know).

Another reason is that there are influential people in London who realise that grave threats have arisen to the Union in Scotland and Northern Ireland (for some reason not in Wales), and that being nice and hoping for the best is not enough.

My assessment of events it that unionists are not even close to being able to respond to the challenges they face without help from London, which has all the apparatus you would expect of the fifth largest economy in the world.

The apathy that there has been around the scandal of legacy, in which IRA distortions are accepted and the state forces that defeated them are harangued, suggests to me that there has been a unionist moral collapse and a loss of conviction.

But these things can change. Major political developments can concentrate the mind, and unionism could yet regain its confidence.

I was talking to an upbeat unionist this week who believes that the descent of nationalism into sectarian support for an IRA it did not in fact support at the time, including growing triumphalism and public displays of support for terror, will one day alienate the centre ground. Young people in the middle who are not of a nationalist background, goes such thinking, will come to realise that unionists and Brexiteers are not to blame for everything.

So what does Mr Burns’s intervention yesterday, calling for the DUP to return to Stormont, signify?

Mr Burns, whose background is Ulster Catholic and who is professedly unionist, who is openly gay and strongly pro Brexit, is an interesting politician. He is an engaging personality, albeit unpredictable and someone who perhaps has a liking for crowds. He was a panellist in an edition of Radio 4’s Any Questions from Portaferry, Co Down earlier this year, in which the audience was utterly hostile to the DUP and noisily embraced any attack on them. It is worth listening to the debate on iPlayer, and how the only times Mr Burns gets applause is when he criticises the DUP. He certainly doesn’t criticise Sinn Fein.

(Incidentally, can anyone point to me a single instance of a BBC current affairs debate programme such as Question Time or Any Questions that ever had an audience that was as one-sided against Irish republicans as that one was against unionism? I pose that as a real question. I have never come across such a broadcast and if someone can point to a recording of one I will mention it in a future column)

Mr Burns was, among other things yesterday, talking about the ‘benefits’ of the NI Protocol. This sounds seductive, but any benefits from the protocol flow from NI in effect staying, in the EU single market, and thus at the expense of our position in the UK internal market.

There had been theories that London would tolerate the DUP Stormont boycott until early 2023, then impose voluntary coalition (Alliance-SDLP-Sinn Fein power sharing for the foreseeable future). One explanation for such thinking is that the UK wants to avoid a trade war with the EU over the NI Protocol.

Last night, as this column was going to print, Shailesh Vara, secretary of state, said he would call an election if there is no Stormont by end of next month – confirmation that pressure on DUP is mounting.

Given that a Conservative government did not so much as utter a word of criticism of Sinn Fein during its three-year collapse of Stormont, over an Irish language act, not a word, the intervention also confirms that however ‘unionist’ this Tory administration is, it will never — ever — treat the political heirs of terror as harshly as it will readily do expendable unionists.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor. Other stories by him:

• Ben Lowry Aug 27: It is no wonder support for the IRA has been growing

• Ben Lowry Aug 27: Autumn in NI always seems to begin in late August

• Ben Lowry August 20: Threats to the Union were largely ignored by NI Tories

• Ben Lowry August 13: Salman Rushdie has been a hero of free speech against extremism

• Ben Lowry August 6: The high powered gathering at Trimble’s funeral in holiday time was a tribute to him

• Ben Lowry July 30: I never hesitated in my support for David Trimble’s 1998 agreement

• Ben Lowry July 23: Imagine a Bloody Sunday memorial that didn’t mention the Paras

• Ben Lowry July 23: What a character was Paddy Hopkirk, and what memories he had

• Ben Lowry July 16: There is no sign of a Tory who sees the problems facing unionists in Northern Ireland

• Ben Lowry July 9: For some reason unionists would not turn against Boris Johnson