DUP can sell a new Agreement

Clearly the DUP is back in business and hotting up the public media space with good copy. Following yesterday’s initial salvo, the man some of the party’s political rivals believe may actually be Dr Paisley’s successor as leader of the DUP, Nigel Dodds has an op ed in the Guardian to the run up to September’s intense talks schedule.

Clearly the party has used its out of the political limelight, listening to nationalist criticism, and constructing it’s own critique of the way forward.

“One of the great failures of the Belfast agreement was the unwillingness or inability of the UUP to sell it to the unionist community. This is hardly surprising given how poor a deal it was for unionism. But to be successful, any deal must beunambiguous, and fully implemented on all sides. It is only in such a set of circumstances, with clear penalties for default, that an agreement will really take root!”

Some of the party’s Unionist critics believe that this is so close to the UUP’s former position as to make no difference. Indeed, in many respects it’s not very far from Sinn Fein’s stated objectives for the upcoming negotiations. The key difference may be that, as Slugger regular David Brewster put it this morning, “…the UUP could say all of these things too, but it wouldn’t be policy – just aspiration”.

However, the party enjoys a critical advantage in that it has not yet been tested in negotiations before, it will therefore be less easy for its rivals to judge how it will behave. Also its terms, being so close in principle to the original agreement, look eminently reasonable. In the event of any collapse in negotiations it would see them home and dry in the blame game that inevitably follows such occasions.

But perhaps most important for nationalists is the admission that Unionist failed to sell the original version, and here Dodds is promising that they are determined to sell any new and quitable agreement to Unionism at large.

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty