Image: Theresa May, DUP leader Arlene Foster, deputy leader Nigel Dodds and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP. in June 2017 PA Images/Dominic Lipinski
Beyond last June’s predictable dinosaur caricatures of its climate-change-denier ministers, few have still taken a serious, detailed look at the DUP’s environmental record. Closer examination shows clear trends in the various ways that Arlene Foster’s party have let down Northern Ireland on the environment for years - and how they have form in using the latter as an instrument through which to make the country as pliable as possible to the extractive interests of international capital.
As Brexit negotiations continue to restate the DUP’s stranglehold over this remarkably weak Conservative government, a slightly clearer picture has begun to emerge of the near-future realignments between the UK and Ireland, as well as the implications they will have for the shared ecology of these islands. And it’s worrying.
