So Edwin Poots, darling of the traditionalists, is favourite to be the next DUP leader.
For those who don’t know him, a short introduction to the man, in his own words
(THREAD)
On the age of the Earth: “My view on the earth is that it's a young earth. My view is 4000 BC.”
Poots on the Big Bang: “You’re telling me that cosmic balls of dust gathered and there was an explosion?
“We’ve had lots of explosions in Northern Ireland and I’ve never seen anything come out of that that was good”
Poots on gay civil partnerships:
“Basically its unnatural in the first instance, and it’s abominable in the second instance.”
Poots on adoption:
“The natural order - whether one believes in God in evolution - is for a man and a woman to have a child and therefore that has made my views on adoption very clear and on raising children very clear, that it should be a man and a woman that raises a child.”
Poots on Arlene Foster being made DUP leader in 2016:
“Her most important job has been, and will remain, that of a wife, mother and daughter.”
The point to be made, with no value judgement of my own, is that he is of the hardest of hardline traditionalists.
The evangelical base of the DUP incarnate.
The direction in which he took the party would be fairly clear.
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Oh God. I’ve just seen the tweet. I feel bad even continuing the pile on on the tweet. So I will just ruthlessly subtweet the tweet.
Those who tweet without knowledge of Northern Irish politics should probably consider the merits of not tweeting at all.
I mean. If we want to be really kind it’s not TOTALLY wrong. The modernising issue is a big one for the DUP. And actually if you replace Sinn Fein with Alliance I suppose it’s not a terrible take...?
Ok ok, it is. But it has potential.
If you want some proper informed analysis of “what all this means” for the DUP and Unionism, you could do much worse than this from @PronouncedAlva this morning.
In November 2020, the EU diplomatic service released the following communiqué. Now look where we are.
Quite apart from anything else, just last week the EU’s own Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the problem was a failure to actually use the vaccines they had. Direct quote below.
Why ban exports when you’re not even using what you’ve got?
Crowd must be several thousand strong. Now marching towards Parliament Square. The name of Sarah Everard on their lips. As well as some more colourful expressions of anger aimed at the police...
1) The DUP might have forseen that Brexit would be challenging in the context of Ireland. Not like they weren't warned.
2) They were still betrayed by Johnson, who literally stood up at DUP conference and said he would never create a sea border.
The DUP's great mistake was arguably not to support Brexit in the first place, as many Remainers are gloating today, but not to support Theresa May's compromise.
That would have left NI in a much better place from a Unionist perspective than Johnson's deal.
Although that of course is only in hindsight, post-betrayal. Harder to see at the time that May's imperfect deal was better.
You could make a kinder argument that the DUP took Johnson at his word, and that was actually the mistake.