Ben Lowry: It is clear that Edwin Poots is not taking the DUP in a remotely hardline direction

Some of us have pointed out that Mr Poots has been pragmatic over the years, has worked easily with Sinn Fein, and was proud of the 2018 deal he struck with them over an Irish language act (but which the DUP as a whole declined to ratify).

As agriculture minister he did not refuse to implement Irish Sea border infrastructure.

Sure enough it is already clear that the new DUP leader is not taking the party in a remotely hardline direction.

On Thursday he met the Taoiseach Micheal Martin in Dublin accompanied by the man who is tipped to be First Minister of Northern Ireland, Paul Givan. Mr Poots told Good Morning Ulster yesterday that the DUP Five Point Plan against the Northern Ireland Protocol in February never included a boycott of North-South meetings.

The plan merely said that North-South relations would “be impacted”. Mr Poots has thus flagged up the anaemic nature of DUP opposition to a disastrous internal UK border that was imposed on unionists after three years of warnings from the great and the good of republican violence if so much as CCTV was put at the land border.

The current court action against the protocol summarises four core legal problems with it. These also confirm it to be a political outrage.

First, it is a breach of the consent principle of Belfast Agreement.

Second, it has been arranged specifically to remove cross-community safeguards (imagine the transatlantic uproar if cross-community protection was removed in a matter of concern to nationalists).

Third, it breaches the basic right to have a say in laws that govern you.

Above all, it is a partial repeal of the foundational document of the United Kingdom, the Act of Union.

Agreements can be torn up and the British constitution undermined, yet if unionists dare to retreat from North-South there are howls of protest about the ministerial code and warnings about the consequent fall of Stormont.

Boris Johnson in 2018 came to Belfast to specify to the DUP he would allow no regulatory or tariff Irish Sea border. He did this to undermine his leader Theresa May, but agreed both when he got her job.

Yet as recently as last Saturday Arlene Foster told the Financial Times about meeting Mr Johnson days earlier, when he talked of his Scotland bridge plan. “He told me last Thursday that he was talking to the engineers in the afternoon. He wants to be Isambard Kingdom Brunel!” she reportedly said.

Imagine a unionist leader even meeting Margaret Thatcher after the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement, let alone engaging in warm banter.

I hope, when the laughs subsided, that Mrs Foster treated the prime minister icily.

With hindsight the DUP should have toppled the Tory government in 2018, when it was failing to follow through on paragraph 50 of the 2017 backstop, which had been inserted to placate unionists and prevent an Irish Sea border. Pulling the plug was no easy option — it ran the risk of leading on to later revenge from the Tories —but continuing to prop them up also failed.

After the referendum I advocated a UK-wide soft Norway exit, yet I can see why the DUP, seeking allies, aligned themselves with Tory Brexiteers. But the tactic did not work.

No Tory MP joined the DUP against the 2019 protocol. Now, too late, Brexiteers claim to be concerned about NI.

The European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness told UTV on Tuesday that the protocol, far from being scrapped, needs to be fully implemented (Brussels was given succour in this demand by anti Brexit political NI parties). Simon Coveney said similar yesterday.

When Sam McBride wrote here (see link below) that a drug had not been approved by the EU for a certain cancer use in NI, a host of critics including NI business leaders implied he had got it wrong and that the drug was available. But they were confusing the fact that there were in this case other routes to availability of the drug with approval of it.

The story was an alarming foretaste of EU power over the administration of drugs in Northern Ireland.

Yet the DUP-UUP are spurning radical political resistance to these and other barriers.

Mr Poots is also saying last year’s NDNA deal to restore Stormont had no Irish language act (ILA), just a cultural one. Yet everyone long ago saw that it is an ILA in all but name.

Sinn Fein must be rubbing their eyes in disbelief. After a century in which there was minimal progress towards republican goals, they suddenly get two leaps forward, on the Irish language and Act of Union.

And it seems only Jim Allister QC is in total opposition to it all,

• If I have misunderstood unionist priorities, fine, but tell me how

Last week on this page (see link below) I said that Arlene Foster, Edwin Poots and Jeffrey Donaldson all seemed equally pragmatic on the Irish Sea border.

Then I wrote: “Doug Beattie said on Good Morning Ulster this week that the NHS was more important than the protocol. Why keep unionist in the title of his party if so?”

Yesterday I said similar in a tweet, adding that Paul Givan, by moving a radio discussion on to waiting lists, seemed also to be putting NHS before protocol.

Mr Beattie tweeted in public reply: “Ben you misrepresented me in your article, I let it go because I thought it was just for brevity, you are misrepresenting me now deliberately. I will accept you might not understand main effort, priority, specified and implied tasks.”

If I misinterpreted what he said on GMU on May 27, I am happy to set the record straight. But I did not “deliberately misrepresent” him. My interpretation of what he said was entirely reasonable.

Chris Buckler, the presenter, had asked the UUP leader: “Let’s start by asking a question we asked the DUP earlier. Because you are coming in as leader, what is your priority whenever you get into that position? Is it to scrap or sort out the Northern Ireland Protocol or is it to deal with the health service that we have been talking about all morning?”

Doug Beattie replied: “Well, well I can be absolutely clear on this, um, Chris, it is not — my priority is not to deal with my party, that will be dealt in due course. My, my priorities will be to deal with all of the issues that are facing us now, and absolutely health is the top of that list.

“The protocol must be dealt with, we will deal with it, but if we do not sort health we are going to allow our citizens to die, or to remain sick so that has to be everybody’s priority.

“I can’t see any political ... [Mr Beattie’s words are briefly unclear at this point] ... see [ing?] health as being at the very top of their priority now as we speak, and we can do this if we all stay united and looking at health.”

If Mr Beattie, Poots or Givan want to write a piece clarifying their priorities, we will publish it.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Sam McBride: A curious episode shows that NI protocol is too confusing for even EU to understand

• Ben Lowry: There is much confusion in unionism, so here are some suggested core pro Union principles

Other articles by Ben Lowry below, and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the News Letter:

• Ben Lowry May 22: Instead of ‘moving on’ from IRA funeral, we still need proper answers

• Ben Lowry May 22: If Joel Keys, 19, wants to help unionism he should get a law degree

• Ben Lowry May 15: Edwin Poots and Doug Beattie will offer two distinct shades of unionism

• Ben Lowry May 8: Formal UK ideas for an amnesty are almost exactly 20 years old

• Ben Lowry May 8: Let us hope that the brilliant Eoghan Harris keeps on writing

• Ben Lowry May 1: Unionism can’t just be about managing long-term defeat

• Ben Lowry May 1: Arlene Foster was given huge opportunity by DUP after her exit helped ruin UUP

• Ben Lowry April 24: NI seems to rely increasingly on just one pollster for data on attitudes to a border poll

• Ben Lowry April 17: DUP still has to choose between managing this disaster or total rejection of it

• Ben Lowry April 10: His enduring marriage to the Queen was key to our understanding of Prince Philip

• Ben Lowry April 3: Radio grilling of UUP leader exposed folly of unionists blaming Simon Byrne for funeral

• Ben Lowry Mar 27: There should not be an Irish language act, but it is too late — the DUP has agreed one

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: We have made it through the worst of the dark, dreaded winter lockdown

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: MLAs lost control of abortion by rejecting modest law reform

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Whatever future Boris Johnson adopts for Northern Ireland seems set to lead to a crisis

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Scotland tunnel isn’t fantasy, but something kids of today might see

• Ben Lowry Mar 6: The cost of victims’ pension has ballooned without explanation as to why 


• Ben Lowry Feb 27: Unionists have fully turned against Irish Sea border because they’ve seen the scale of disaster

• Ben Lowry Feb 20: We still lack answers as to why IRA funeral got special treatment at Roselawn

• Ben Lowry Feb 13: Peter Robinson has long experience of what is and is not politically feasible

• Ben Lowry Feb 6: There is barely any unionist support for violence, despite justified anger at sea border

• Ben Lowry Jan 30: At last, clear reason for UK and unionists to stop being weak towards Ireland/EU

• Ben Lowry Jan 23: Lockdown sceptics have been undermined by crazy theories, but sensible criticisms haven’t gone away

• Ben Lowry Jan 16: The Irish Sea border was imposed because UK knew unionists would take it

• Ben Lowry in 2020: Last night unionists celebrated a move towards Irish unity

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