Owen Polley: ​Stormont rows are stoked by intolerance of unionist views

If anything, many of the recent rows have been caused by a lack of tolerance for any argument that upsets the nationalist/‘progressive’ view currently dominating the assembly. This has created an aggressive atmosphere that is quickly getting out of control.

Take the ongoing attempt to force Paul Givan’s resignation.

Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Alliance and independent unionist, Claire Sugden, are supporting the hard-left republican, Gerry Carroll, in a ‘no-confidence’ motion against the education minister.

We know that Irish nationalists see parallels between their aspirations to destroy Northern Ireland and Palestinians’ desire to wipe Israel from the map. For that reason, they feel more affinity with Arab terrorists than with Israeli forces trying to protect their citizens and remove the threat of Hamas.

Selective media coverage of this conflict, and an aching desperation to pick the fashionable side in any dispute, means this attitude has also been adopted by many ‘progressives’. They once styled themselves as middle-ground, but have become radicalised by the heated atmosphere of social media.

What’s new is their refusal to accept that unionists and many on the right are entitled to take a different point of view on the Middle Eastern conflict, or indeed any other controversial issue.

That is the only explanation for the incendiary plan, hatched by Belfast City Council, to fly the Palestinian flag at city hall. Even the most naive, ignorant councillor must know that this emblem has become inextricably linked with displays of anti-semitism and support for terrorism.

For some of them, that’s the point. We expect this from Sinn Fein and the SDLP is expected to try to ‘outgreen’ the Shinners.

The dynamic that has changed, in Northern Ireland, is that the ‘middle ground’ are keener to prove that their views are fashionable than acknowledge nuance or show pragmatism. They voted for this provocative gesture in Belfast, just like their colleagues targeted the education minister at Stormont, with a futile vote that the DUP can ignore.

Let’s face it, if Paul Givan did anything wrong, by using his department’s resources to share a press release about visiting a school in Jerusalem, it was trivial in comparison to things that have effectively been ignored at Stormont, never mind the criminal activity that on occasion caused it to collapse.

Previously, Gordon Lyons, the communities minister, faced a similar vote. That was because he published a relatively innocuous tweet, after anti-immigration riots followed the attempted rape of a teenager in Ballymena.

Last week, the SDLP leader, Claire Hanna, made a video claiming that unionists had engaged in “months and months of stoking racial tension”. This was a frivolous allusion to a crisis that is threatening to overwhelm the West, never mind the UK and Northern Ireland.

Many unionist contributions to this subject, like Lord Empey’s comments about integration, have actually been serious and thoughtful. The type of politics the SDLP is increasingly indulging in, in contrast, mixes student-style left-wing agitation with TikTok length soundbites.

That means a complex issue, which is transforming almost every European society, can be reduced to a parable about nasty and nice.

This deliberate simple-mindedness can be seen too in the idea that the Irish language’s remorseless march into public life is a matter of rights.

Unionists argue that some communities see Gaelic as divisive, because it has been used as a political weapon by republicans, with the result that there are sensitivities over its imposition in public places. They also say that replicating public services in the language is a pointless waste of money.

It isn’t just that nationalists and Alliance refute these arguments. Increasingly, they simply won’t accept that anyone could fairly hold these views or have a right to articulate them.

The row about Casement Park is another similar example of this intolerance.

It is taken for granted that the GAA should get whatever it asks for, to build a new stadium in Belfast. In this telling, the notion that it should get a fair share of public money, and tailor its plans to the available resources, is advanced only by vindictive, hate-filled unionists, who are interested only in stopping nationalists getting what they are entitled to.

Again, a perfectly legitimate political dispute about taxpayers’ money and fairness is reduced to some sort of morality tale about the iniquity of unionism.

Against this backdrop, the responses from the DUP and the UUP, certainly until relatively recently, have been relatively mild. The parties both used their annual conferences to espouse the merits of power-sharing at Stormont. And Gavin Robinson was keen to play down the significance of any rows with Sinn Fein.

Indeed, the DUP recently signed off on the appointment of a new activist Irish language commissioner. The party must know that this will generate a never-ending list of demands and grievances, which will now carry an extra air of authority, but it still decided to make another important concession.

If unionists have finally been forced to stand up to constant aggression from nationalists, and vacuous, pompous lectures from Alliance, that is long overdue. The real issue is those parties’ sustained attempts to prevent perfectly legitimate unionist or conservative views from being heard fairly by the public.