Ben Lowry: Unionists have not been alone in not wanting Sinn Fein at the helm

Opposition to the Windsor Framework deal has been muted.

I suspect this is because the early and co-ordinated claims that it was a stunning​ deal got traction because unionists did not provide a counter view. They did not want to be depicted as unreasonable by dismissing it. The complex nature of the trade arrangement meant that most people were uncertain about the deal and susceptible to the loudest verdicts on it. If not for Jim Allister, Lord Dodds, Sammy Wilson, Lord Frost and a handful of others, little would have been said about Northern Ireland being largely outside the UK internal market.

The DUP panel that will examine the deal is now established and a party delegation is off to America for St Patrick’s Day. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is surrounded by allies. Not only is the party not in what its enemies would call ‘rejectionist’ mode, I cannot see more than a handful of key members who are likely to reject the Windsor deal out of hand.

The Ulster Unionists have said little too. Much of unionism is mulling its options as the clock ticks. I think potential rebellion among Brexiteer Tory MPs has become less likely because they can see that unionists are so mute about it. Both the UUP and DUP know that their motives will be furiously traduced if they reject the framework.

But the need for time is fuelling anti unionist smears. One smear is that unionists are searching for ‘lundies’, a rubbish claim about which I wrote a column recently. Some of us fear that unionism is conceded too much but we understand that such concessions are often made by people of honour working under extreme pressure.

Another smear, recently pushed by The Times newspaper in its editorials, is that unionists only say no. On the contrary, since 2007 unionism has said yes to major changes, including a legacy deal in 2014, the tearing up of the Three Strands in 2020, an Irish language act and the notion that there must be no change at the Irish land border (not even CCTV), an idea that was never properly contested and which is at the heart of the current crisis.

But the big smear of the moment is that unionists will not serve under a nationalist first minister. I have appeared in several broadcasts in the Republic in recent weeks and it comes up every time. My response is that unionists in Northern Ireland are never going to be thrilled at the prospect of an Irish nationalist first minister, in the same way that unionists in Scotland are not happy to live under a separatist one.

People of strong political views never like to live under the rule of a party they dislike deeply, be they Tory or Labour voters in England or Donald Trump or Joe Biden supporters in the US. Then add to such normal political unhappiness an added layer of stress for unionists when that ruling party wants to remove them from the nation state in which they want to remain.

Even so, I think unionists would easily have come to terms with a nationalist first minister such as Seamus Mallon of the SDLP. He was culturally very green in ways that were alien to unionists, yet he was obviously prepared to make Northern Ireland work, even though an all Ireland was his preference. He was also passionately anti IRA.

Sinn Fein, however, is determined for NI not to exist. This motivates its attrition approach to politics, edging the province away from the rest of the UK. It was inextricably linked to the IRA and its triumphalism about past terrorism has been growing. Republicans are granted influence that no-one else is permitted to have, as evident in the lockdown-breaching Bobby Storey funeral. A range of authorities and investigations could not even find anyone to blame for that scandal. Sinn Fein was allowed to collapse Stormont for three years until it got a Gaelic act, yet wasn’t even criticised for that let alone threatened with reform of power-sharing to exclude them.

A shrilly pro IRA party at the helm of government, normalising the history of the republican campaign of violence, is the stuff of nightmare for unionists. NI’s centre ground would also once have found that prospect nightmarish. Until recently most Dublin politicians would not countenance such an outcome there.

And yet the UUP and DUP have now made clear, albeit with no enthusiasm, that they know they have to accept a SF first minister if it is the largest party at Stormont.

The devolution stalemate has been about an Irish Sea border, not about fundamental opposition to the notion of any ‘nationalist’ first minister.