DUP and UUP politicians in the loyal orders who back this pitiful Stormont deal are at odds with their Orange brethren

Those TUV and PUP politicians who are also in the loyal orders can distance themselves from this undemocratic agreement, which treats the unionist electorate as stooges in an elitist game of self-preservation.

The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland has clearly indicated that it has serious reservations about large chunks of the New Deal package.

This has been reiterated already by strong condemnations from some of the district lodges and within the next week a larger forum of Orange members will deliberate and decide on the acceptability or not of the New Deal.

The Royal Black and the Apprentice Boys of Derry have still to make public announcements as to the acceptability of this constitutional agreement.

The agreement should have been presented to the public as part of the DUP / UUP manifestos in an assembly election that should have been called next month.

The DUP political elites ratified this agreement and the whole package was presented as a good deal for the unionist community. The DUP pointed to a nebulous Castlereagh Foundation and some (as yet unspecified) initiative to eliminate work-class Protestant under-achievement in education.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs, the facts and the fictions around the New Deal, all that matters at this moment in time are people’s perceptions as to the future ramifications of the New Deal. As it currently stands within the unionist community, the DUP and the UUP appear to have committed electoral hari-kari.

Moreover, the DUP / UUP MLAs and MPs who ‘signed up’ to this agreement are apparently at odds with a great number of their Orange brethren.

The DUP / UUP ‘Orange’ councillors who have failed to resign on principle also are at odds with their rank and file Orange brethren.

There is a history of Orange political elites taking a different political view to their working-class brethren, so this hiccup for the Orange Order will come and go. The same may not be true of those Orange politicians who directly (or indirectly) signed up to the New Deal and returned to Stormont.

DUP Orange politicians took the lead in signing up to the New Deal and abandoning their unionist electors, but the UUP did the same.

I read in the media that UUP politicians have tried to argue that they never actually ‘signed up’ to the New Deal? What nonsense, what subterfuge, what contempt!

Whilst signing any contract is evidential proof that the contract is in existence, contracts (in law) can be entered into in many ways. Contracts can be ‘signed’ by acts of performance.

The UUP Orange politicians in two years time will not be able to distance themselves from the New Deal by the ruse that they never signed it.

Performance under the New Decade, New Approach contract was undertaken by the UUP when they entered into Stormont, took their assembly seats, accepted a ministry and when that health minister signed for the release of public funds that were embargoed until the deal was signed.

Let there be no doubt: all Orange MLAs, councillors and MPs in DUP-UUP have ‘signed up’ to this pitiful New Deal.

Only those DUP / UUP politicians who choose to resign and publically distance themselves from the New Decade: New Approach Deal, can present themselves to the unionist electorate as anti-New Deal candidates in 2022.