Trimble delivered DUP to the middle ground

Understandably much of the media mind is focused on the David Trimble, some of it intelligently turning over his legacy – what worked and more often what didn’t. Here Steven King puts up a sturdy case for the defence. It’s not dissimilar to the case that Sylvia Hermon put yesterday on RTE, that David Trimble had “delivered the DUP to the middle ground”:

David Trimble has finally used up his nine lives, but it’s amazing that he sustained support for it within unionism for so long. He had to use some ingenious – some would say dubious – methods. Furthermore, he alienated many nationalists with his stratagems. Nevertheless, he struck a far more ambitious deal than Brian Faulkner did, and got away with it for years longer. History will record that he kept the agreement sustained long enough to alter the terms of debate. Even the DUP uses the Good Friday Agreement to buttress its arguments. Equally, after the experience of last December, nobody believes that the DUP is actually seeking to reinvent the wheel: the changes it would settle for, if it could, are purely administrative.

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