Ben Lowry: Yes, our editorial on the problems with Stormont was blunt - but was so for a reason

The Ulster Unionists again showed that they fully share the Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance contempt of the DUP boycott over the Irish Sea border.

Mr Beattie’s deputy, Robbie Butler, presents a similar picture on the opposite page of a unionism that is entirely behind a return to the assembly (‘Unionists are saying a resounding yes to Stormont’).

This sort of rhetoric highlights the bind that Sir Jeffrey is in. It has been clear for a while that he wants the DUP to return to Stormont, and his speech to his party conference last month was explicit about that, describing Stormont as “essential” for securing Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

The problem is that unionism is by no means universally keen on Stormont, no matter what Mr Beattie and Mr Butler might say, and the DUP rank-and-file isn’t either. While DUP politicians reject talk of any internal split, there is a clear gap between those who would go back in the morning and those who would stay out indefinitely.

Then there is the TUV vote. Its is played down by commentators but Jim Allister consistently performed well in MEP elections, which showed large support for him personally even if not for his party’s less well known candidates. And the TUV got almost 8% of the Stormont election vote last year, despite a major DUP campaign to vote for them to prevent a SF first minister, and would have got an even bigger share of the vote if not for the fear of unionism losing the top spot overall to republicans.

Sir Jeffrey is torn between two incompatible unionist camps, and his party has some senior members who are in one camp (pro Stormont) and some who are in another (anti Stormont).

On Thursday Sir Jeffrey wrote a sharp letter to this newspaper complaining about a “negative and defeatist” editorial we ran the day before about the prospects of a Stormont return. Our Morning View had ended with this line: “Unionist options are poor but if a government paper pledge leads to a return, few unionists will believe there has been a real victory.”

On Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster I said that I thought our essay was blunt rather than negative and defeatist. The web version of this article will link to Sir Jeffrey’s letter (‘The News Letter might concede defeat but we in the DUP will not do so,’ Nov 2) and to the editorial (‘Few unionists will see victory in a return to Stormont,’ Nov 1) and you can make up your own mind.

For a while now it has been clear that the big range of views within unionism now is unreconcilable within a single party, and this explains why calls for a united party have all but vanished. The problem unionism cannot afford three parties amid a shrinking unionist vote.

Some sort of realignment ought to be coming yet it is hard to see how that will actually happen, given the reluctance of people to walk out of parties en masse, and the fact that parties rarely disband. One possible catalyst for a realignment from three unionist parties into two movements is a Stormont return.

Given that Sir Jeffrey was not shy in dismissing our editorial, it cannot go unremarked that his party has sent out mixed signals about Stormont. Indeed, as the editorial pointed out there have been mixed signals about the party’s red lines for a Stormont return, given that it often now talks about the need to repair our place in the UK internal market, more than its own seven tests. There was already existing disagreement about whether the seven tests actually meant that NI should not subject to EU trade law. There was an interesting illustration of the uncertainty on that point after Lords Godson and Bew wrote an essay for this paper on September 21 outlining why they thought the DUP should return to Stormont, after which Lord Bew appeared on BBC TV and said that one of the DUP seven tests, on the need to remove the democratic deficit, only made sense if there was EU law. Yet when Sir Jeffrey wrote a hard-hitting essay the following week for us, dismissing the Godson and Bew article, he overlooked that criticism and merely repeated: “The democratic deficit must also be restored.”

Our editorial this week pointed out another discrepancy: that if Sir Jeffrey thinks Stormont essential, but is also saying clearly that the DUP will say no if London fails to produce the right offer, how could the party feasibly stay out if devolution is indispensable? Yet his letter to us repeated that unionists need Stormont but that the DUP might also say no.

There is further uncertainty as to whether the DUP thinks dual EU-UK market access a good thing or not. While it is hard to say this to voters, I do think unionists should have been clear all along that the seductive-sounding ‘dual market access’ just means that we are in the EU single market above the UK one, with all the constitutional problems that entails.

I write none of this to suggest that the DUP faces an easy path forward. Rather, I understand well their ambivalence. The options are grim. particularly in light of the unwavering special treatment that UK governments, be they Labour or Tory, give to Sinn Fein, a party that wants Northern Ireland to fail. And indeed the authorities more widely give SF special treatment, as shown in the scandals around policing.

It is plausible to argue that unionists must show that NI succeeds. But amid an Irish Sea trade barrier, rapid IRA advances on legacy, irreconcilable views on Hamas, failing public services for which past assembly incompetence is culpable, it is not plausible to argue that all will be well if only Stormont comes back to a big UK cheque and everyone smiles.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor