Real Unionists? Continuity Unionists?

Nigel Dodds, Gregory Campbell, William McCrea, Ian McCrea, Trevor Clarke, Adrian McQuillan, Lord (Maurice) Morrow, Michelle McIlveen, Tom Buchanan, Allan Bresland, David Simpson, Stephen Moutray, Jim Wells and Mervyn Storey are the DUP members of Northern Ireland Assembly, about forty per cent of the party's total, who are said to be on the brink of secession. Nelson McCausland is only constrained by office, not that that has stopped people in the past. And the circumstances of Jeffrey Donaldson's and Arlene Foster's move from the UUP to the DUP are such that they cannot be happy about where their new party now finds itself.

There is, however, the question of where these DUP dissidents now find themselves. They have moved as far as anyone, to a position of opposition to the devolution of Policing and Justice which is really opposition to devolution at all. Donaldson and Foster may have come out of the integrationist wing of the UUP. But Nigel Dodds? William McCrae? Maurice Morrow? This is quite, quite astonishing. If they were offered a situation in which all Westminster legislation applied automatically to Northern Ireland unless specifically disapplied by the Assembly, which would then exist only for that purpose and for fortnightly Question Times with the Secretary of State, then they would presumably now say yes to it.

And that, almost as extraordinarily, would place them in the same camp as Traditional Unionist Voice, headed by an old DUP hand who has also moved to a position which logically can only oppose any devolution, and in any case having as its other luminaries a man who as a UUP MP chaired the Northern Ireland Committee of the Monday Club, and Bob McCartney's old deputy in the avowedly integrationist UKUP; "Real Unionist" was how McCartney styled himself when he first stood for North Down against the devolutionist DUP candidate of the then pan-Unionist front.

Will these dissidents join Traditional Unionist Voice? Well, would Jim Allister want several potential alternative Leaders in his party? When it comes to eventual succession in the natural course of things, David Vance would seem to have it stitched up. But not with, say, Nigel Dodds, or Gregory Campbell, or David Simpson to contend with.

The TUV's principal objection, to enforced coalition in which all parties are in government all the time so that no one is asking any questions, is entirely sound. The shame is that it takes the TUV to say this obvious thing.

And what of the role of the Orange Order in recent events? The Orange Order, with the Black Preceptory and the Apprentice Boys, is rather like the Irish language: a feature of Ireland in general and of Northern Ireland in particular, whether or not this or that person happens to like it. But who is an Orangeman these days? How many of them are there? How many will there be in coming decades? My Ulster Protestant friends of my own age and younger liken it to Freemasonry in rural and provincial England: time was when it was the only way to get on, but these days membership would if anything be a positive hindrance, and they, observant Protestants and staunch Unionists, would never dream of joining it, being already quite a bit older than their fathers or, especially, grandfathers were when they signed up.

However, in view of today's happy news about the Equalities Bill, let us conclude ecumenically with the Doxology to the Old Hundredth, always sung by Ian Paisley and his supporters before he launches into his speech acknowledging election to whatever, even though it (the Doxology, not the Old Hundredth) was written by a High Church and Jacobite English bishop, Thomas Ken:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The heavenly host is thus invoked, but never mind...