Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Ian Paisley bowed to the growing discontent within the DUP yesterday, and announced that he will resign as Northern Ireland's First Minister in May.
As OurKingdom noted last month, the favourite to succeed him is Finance Minister Peter Robinson, with Enterprise Minister Nigel Dodds likely to take over as deputy leader of the DUP.
The strength of Robinson's position has been emphasised by an endorsement from newly promoted junior minister Jeffrey Donaldson, a moderate in DUP terms and the party's most high-profile convert from the Ulster Unionists.
Donaldson's former colleagues reacted to Paisley's announced with a note of bitterness: "I think that when we come to look back on all of this, the Paisley era over the last 40 years has been a catastrophe for unionism quite honestly," UUP leader Sir Reg Empey said. "He has divided every single unionist institution and every single Protestant institution."
While the animosity between the two parties should not be under-estimated, there have been suggestions that Paisley's departure could pave the way for a DUP-UUP merger. This could prove a double-edged sword however, gaining seats for unionism at the expense of depressing the overall unionist vote.
A more immediate priority for Robinson will be to see off the challenge of MEP Jim Allister, whose use of the Freedom of Information Act did much to seal Paisley's demise. Taking back the European Parliament seat which Allister won while still a DUP member will be a key target.
A quarter of a century after Ian Paisley helped to bring down Brian Faulkner's power-sharing government, his own party faces an unexpected threat from the right. Fortunately, all the signs are that if history is repeating itself, it will be closer to farce than to tragedy this time around.
Nevertheless, Sinn Féin and the SDLP will be wary of the consequences of DUP attempts to appease its own hardliners. In the end, ironically, it was nationalists who were sorriest to see Paisley go.
Comments
Tom,
Paisley brought the unarmed IRA to the table which the people drew them all to in their increasing exasperation when settled by Blair declaring their future was up to them. Neither demography (outbreeding) nor devolution (subsidy above all others) will settle the situation. Prosperity will. They need time and space to heal, and get back to us their fellow peoples denied by the state we are in, and then decide. By then, it will not matter because this state will have left its stage.
The big yin will earn a never recognised posthumous peace prize long before the far too late, passing fair, but now largely irrelevant contributions of Adams and McGuiness as all-Ireland seeks representation north. He has gone when the going is good, safe in knowing that all Ulster including the shortfall can choose where they belong on their terms and not those of the state we are all in here. He went because he had run our course. It is ours now to decide what our futures will be together. The one the political classes here wish to decide for us, or the one we increasingly clamour for.
Witness today at Westminster, where Whitehall gained defeat in narrow victory over their opposition in forgetting it was us. We told all major parties in 2005 we had had enough of their decades of infighting at our expense. Some are listening. The supine lump remaining deserve your scorn in putting your feet up if 'none of the above' meets your merit when GB of GB decides it is right that he can face up to us in 2010 at the latest. We can wait to see him off to think again in oblivion.
What we cannot wait is the treasonable ratification of this Treaty before us in our name, when no major party at Westminster, including the present misgovernment, had more than 20% of the total electorates support in 2005. And when, so that we could not distinguish between them, they each promised a Referendum. It is not about whether this Treaty is good or bad for us. It is about whether we or they decide what is good or bad for us in whatever relationship with the EU we decide we should have. Namely: none, semi-detached but still paying, intergovernmental (no sharing ours), confedederal (some sharing of ours as we wish) or federal (others deciding what we share of ours). They do not and never did have a mandate, let alone a demonstrable competence, to decide what is good for us. None of them. The state we are in is not fit for purpose. It does not do what we would wish it said on our uncodified tin they dare not ask what we might wish it to be in the shock of finding out it it is not what they wished.
Next up is a Bill of Our Wrongdoings and their Irresponsibilities, perhaps wrapped up in a man of straw's constitutional reforms to secure their freedom to tell us what they thoughtlessly thought good for us. Their transparent folly is laughable given some of these turkeys would actually vote for their own Christmas rather than recognise they have no legitimate right to be their own undoing in ours.
I don't despair because we will be this states undoing. And all who sail upon and give wind to the bad ship Britannica. It was sinking long before a rock holed the waterline. It will go down faster now.
So what remains to be done? Wait awhile. See to what degree this most centralised state in the West fails us again. Apr 24 should see the 2nd Reading of Unlock Democracy's Citizens' Convention Bill. If GB of GB takes it up wholesale but in a shorter timeframe, we might be in business. If the present Speaker is still around by then, we won't. Not even if the Gordon who is not for us finds some more criteria or tests to do it his way, pretendy commissions or no, in his first forlorn attempt to be elected as the last first past the post sub-prime minister of this sub-prime state.
Do not be surprised if Scotland does not hold its breath again to find out what is not going to be. They like we presently here will have what we will in reunion regardless. We will all decide what that relationship will be in the absence of so called governance without leave.
No major party got off the hook of our unmaking today. None can. They do not have the power to do so. They will not have the power to do so until they join us. We need not wait until they do. Sovereignty is ours, individually and severally. So it is in our hands, not by their leave. It always was and always will be. It is we who need to recognise that. They always did. It is why they keep us from it at all costs, even to themselves.
"Sovereignty and Confederacy: the antidote to Unions' Blues" And in however many "Unions" you care to think of. Look up "Council of the Isles" in Wikipedia. Think how that might evolve in reunion of all our family of nations and nations of families.
We do not even need their permission to find out what that might be. When all else fails us, time we did it for ourselves. Am i dreaming? No way. Watch the space they leave empty for us to do so. They have left us that last choice. Will we fail ourselves too?
Yours aye,
Keith
O'Neill, Faulkner and Trimble, wherever they may be, must be having a quiet laugh at seeing Paisley being finally defeated not by the provos, the Irish government or even Westminster, but by the very forces of bigotry and intolerance he unleashed upon them.- you can't condemn Irish republicans as the spawn of the devil for over 40 years and then expect yopur rank and file to quietly acquiesce when you decide for the sake of your own vanity and powerlust to jump into bed with those very same men.
Many a loyalist paramilitary has stated that they wish they had never listened to the man, I wish he had never been inflicted upon my country; Northern Irish unionism would certainly be in an ummeasurably stronger position that it is today if he'd stuck to preaching his own perverse version of the Gospel to his fellow fundamentalist rednecks in Ballymena.
My only hope is that, despite evidence to the contrary, he does in fact have a conscience and that he use his retirement to ponder long and hard upon what he has "achieved" for "his" people.
You can't fight forever. Someone, anyone, has to end it eventually. Paisley saw an opening and he took it. Isn't NI better off today? Please don't reply to my post. It's just something to ponder.
Paisley may have sat with Sinn Fein, but this was not out of political principle, so much as both parties getting their money cut off! I would also say that no other individual has caused so much trouble as this man in Northern Ireland.
I have a copy of his "Meisterwerk" at home, entitled "The Pope is the Antichrist" - if you want an idea of what a nutcase this man is, I suggest reading this book.
In recent times, politics and religion have become money spinners for him. Not only does he get huge baksheesh from American fundies, but he was also drawing salaries from being an MP, AM and MEP until recently. Plus a First Minister's salary. Bigotry pays well. (I don't think this is the "prosperity" Keith's talking about above though)
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