The DUP leader was speaking as his reshuffled cabinet took part in their first executive meeting on Thursday.A strange one bearing in mind that the anti-devolutionist vote at the European Election amounted to about 13%- to put it onto perspective, that’s about half the total gathered by the BNP and UKIP on the mainland. The problem from the DUPes’ point of view is (unfortunately) not the public’s disillusionment with the concept of devolution, more the fact that the DUP has been replaced as the Prodiban’s main party of choice by Jim Allister and the TUV. Too many of the new Ultras are no more true believers in the wider United Kingdom brand of Unionism than those within the DUP who’ve parroted the "Leave us alone to be Brits in our own peculiar way" mantra to Westminster over the decades- kick Sinn Fein and (for those on the extremes of the extreme) SDLP out of "government" and they’ll be more than satisfied with a glorified Parish-Pump Council on the Hill dispensing grace and favours to the Red White'n'Blue Chosen Few.
Mr Robinson said the executive should not be allowed to be brought down by "wreckers" either through violence or politics.
I don’t like devolution in any part of the UK primarily because I believe as a principle it weakens the Union; I also don’t like that people who have the blood of so many of my fellow British/Irish on their hands are now in positions of power and responsibility with Northern Ireland's devolved Assembly. But both choices, unfortunately again, were and remain the democratic wish of the majority of the electorate. Taking those uncontestable facts on board then, surely the best way of spreading "the gospel of devolution" is not by sending out the propagandists with their Stalinist tracts, but by producing the kind of quantifiable and measureable results that even the ultimate cynics such as myself can’t argue against.
"Better than it would have been under Direct Rule" ain’t good enough.
3 comments:
Cogently put, O'Neill. I, too, have reservations about devolution throughout the UK. I'd doubtless be classed as a political dinosaur, mind you, since I'm more convinced than ever of the merits of British integration!
Notwithstanding those words, I, too, must accept that a majority wishes devolution. My integrationist tendencies must be quite transparent in my pronouncements!
Tim
"I'd doubtless be classed as a political dinosaur, mind you, since I'm more convinced than ever of the merits of British integration!"
So am I.
And there's nothing whatsover with being a dinosaur- think of yourself as a unionist T-Rex;)
Tim your more of a 'stasis'aurus, you now the ones that mope along chewing the cud and then get eaten up by a vibrant 'devolva'saurus....
The thing about time is that only moves in one direction, , you can't turn the clocks back.
It's time to shed those caveman union jack and embrace local identity and public engagement in politics, both eschewed by a centralist parliamentary system only open to party machines.
Devolution has ushered in diversity over monopoly, celebrates difference in the face of intransigence and engenders real change i against hollow rhetoric and empty unionist drivel.
Get with the time, flares & platforms went out with T Rex.
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