Arlene Foster should catch on that the Conservative Party could not care less about Northern Ireland

Riots flare up in our Province once again.

Arlene Foster and her DUP party cast aspersions on the chief constable in an attempt to divert attention from their political failure in believing Boris Johnson at their self congratulatory 2018 annual conference, when he boomed that there would never be any regulatory or customs checks in the Irish sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and in August 2020, when as prime minister and still booming to a besotted DUP, ‘There will be no border down the Irish Sea: over my dead body.’

Well there is and Boris Johnson is very much alive.

Therein lies the real reason for the riots. The so called Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the Brexit deal agreed between London and Brussels which leaves Northern Ireland part of the EU single market and therefore creates a border for goods in the Irish Sea between NI and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Had the DUP accepted Teresa May’s resolution of a ‘backstop’ which would have kept NI and the UK together in terms of trading arrangements, but with their usual lack of political vision they voted down her deal.

Now some people have decided to riot, while the rest of us can repent at leisure.

When will Arlene Foster ‘catch on’ that the Conservative Party could not care less about Northern Ireland?

In 1993 the Conservative Secretary of State Patrick Mayhew in an interview with a German newspaper, complained about the cost to the Exchequer of Northern Ireland, which at present runs about £10 billion. His final words were, ‘People think we don’t want to let NI leave the UK, if I am completely honest we’d do it with pleasure.’

Wilson Burgess, Londonderry

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