Sinn Fein will collapse Stormont over Irish but unionists won’t over NI Protocol

Doug Beattie says that “the last thing we need is for the NI Executive to collapse, for there to be even more instability here in Northern Ireland”, yet in doing so he mandates that NI unionists accept the slavery imposed upon them by the EU!

Mr Beattie demands unionist allegiance and submission to the forces of Europe because he offers no plausible solutions to removing the NI Protocol.

Cap in hand, like some subservient vassal he goes grovelling on his knees to Dublin, London and Brussels asking for the crumbs from their tables and he humiliates all those unionists who this week will attend protest parades at Bangor, Glengormley and Portadown and risk PSNI prosecution.

Mr Beattie, also demands that Edwin Poots ensures that Stormont remains after the new post of first minister is filled.

A small group of unionist politicians (but not the unionist public) want Stormont not to collapse.

Mr Beattie, in effect demands that Mr Poots commits to the Irish language legislation to keep Sinn Fein on board and to ensure that Stormont limps on for another year. However, SF will not accept any new NI unionist first minister who does not promise Irish language enactment.

Today, the unionist community are blackmailed by SF into agreeing to deliver Irish language as a quid-pro-quo to keeping alive Stormont!

Guess who will surrender?

Remember also that the UUP in January 2020 denigrated the New Deal’s Irish Language proposals and now Mr Beattie (as is Mrs Foster) is imploring Mr Poots to keep SF on board by agreeing to implement Irish language commitments and if the DUP do so, then Mr Poots is sealing the DUP’s fate – and indeed all Unionists fate – in the NI assembly election of May 2022.

If the UUP did not sign up to Irish language legislation in January 2020, Mr Beattie signed the UUP up to the legislation this weekend by his media comments on RTE.

Paradoxically, Sinn Fein could be in the enviable position once again, that they could walk away from Stormont, collapse it in June 2021, all because unionists refuse to implement Irish language legislation. In doing so Michelle O’Neill would show herself as strong as McGuiness (in 2007) and Sinn Fein would further increase their election mandate, simply because they would argue they had no ethical choice but to collapse Stormont because of unionist lies and prevarications.

In NI we have a Sinn Fein party that would happily collapse Stormont over an ancient, unused language, whilst at the same time we have unionist MLAs who refuse to collapse Stormont to free NI from the NI Protocol.

This is why many unionists this week will protest at Bangor, Glengormley and Portadown.

Dr Edward Cooke, Mallusk

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