Where did it all go wrong for the DUP?

Last Thursday’s general election was certainly a shock to the system for the DUP, and Unionists in general, with not a single Unionist party gaining any seats. The DUP lost the formerly safe seat of North Belfast to Sinn Fein’s John Finucane and Emma Little-Pengelly lost South Belfast to the SDLP’s Claire Hanna.

It’s not hard to paint a picture that Unionism had a terrible night, even if the Ulster Unionists benefitted from a modest boost of nearly ten thousand votes across the 18 constituencies. But in all, not a fantastic night for Steve Aiken who had come under significant pressure to stand aside in favour of the DUP in a number of marginal seats such as East Belfast, South Belfast, and significantly in North Belfast to help the DUP retain the seat.

Arlene Foster had a nightmare as her deputy leader and prize Westminster asset Nigel Dodds, MP for North Belfast since 2001, lost his seat to rising star of Sinn Fein and Lord Mayor of Belfast John Finucane. The DUP shed almost 50,000 votes across Northern Ireland.

The eight DUP MPs that held onto their seats saw their majorities collapse against a resurgent Alliance Party who, under new leader Naomi Long MEP, have increased their share at the vote at the local, European and now General elections. The cherry on the Alliance cake this year being the absolute blinder that was played by their deputy leader Stephen Farry who clinched the North Down seat from the hands DUP’s Alex Easton by a majority of nearly three thousand votes – a seat that many had predicted would go to the DUP. Alliance is now one of only three parties in Northern Ireland to have representation at every level of government (Council, Assembly, Westminster and Brussels).

So where did it all go wrong for the DUP? Overall there are a number of factors that have played directly into the DUP returning to Westminster with only eight seats rather than the eleven they had hoped to grab.

The first one is the dormant Assembly. With nearly three years of inaction at Stormont and increasing crises in our health service, schools and infrastructure, the DUP have taken their fair share of the blame for the impasse along with their former Government partners, Sinn Fein. The DUP have been keen over the last eighteen months to paint themselves as the party of delivery, as the party of government and stability in Northern Ireland. But people aren’t stupid. Sinn Fein didn’t bring the institutions down for no reason, and regardless of the DUP’s willingness to form an Executive tomorrow they are beholden to an electorate who are punishing the two largest parties for their inability to sit down and agree a way forward.

The second factor, and perhaps the biggest in this election, is Brexit. The DUP rode into Westminster in 2017 as kingmakers and held Theresa May over a barrel regarding Brexit – adamant that there was to be no customs union, no single market, no regulatory alignment, no checks at the border with Ireland and no border in the Irish Sea. They wanted Theresa May to push a square peg into a round hole and voted down every attempt she made to pass the Withdrawal Agreement in an effort to increase their leverage.

Truth be told the DUP in 2017 were gifted with influence that Northern Irish MPs had never tasted before – the ability to push a British Prime Minister into whatever corner they wanted to push her into. However, they significantly overplayed their hand. Arlene and her MPs were never quite sure what kind of Brexit they wanted, not knowing how to adequately manipulate the leverage they were handed through no skill of their own to get a better deal for Northern Ireland.

That the party was constantly dismissive of the Remain majority within Northern Ireland, even within their own constituencies (North Belfast, South Belfast, East Londonderry and the target seat of North Down) was likely a significant factor in the collapse of their vote and the consolidation of Remain voters around the SDLP and Alliance in swing seats. The DUP had painted themselves as the party of business and investment but were curt regarding the very real concerns of local businesses towards the Government’s plans for leaving the EU.

Their leadership in Westminster was sloppy, and their behaviour was like that of a petulant child who had been handed the keys to the Kingdom. They did everything in their power to bungle a once in a lifetime opportunity by aligning themselves with Boris Johnson and then changing tack when it became clear that his rejuvenated deal was actually worse than the one they had voted down. By the time it dawned on them that they had been used as pawns, it was too late. It made them look foolish and weak. Tied into this, the DUP began to increasingly allow themselves to be drawn into the Brysonisation of Unionist politics and let themselves to be influenced by some of the most extreme fringe elements of Loyalism.

Large banners decrying the ‘Betrayal Act’ that was BoJo’s deal, and tasteless posters that targeted Stephen Farry, Claire Hanna and John Finucane as pawns of the IRA etc served only to tar the DUP with the same brush as anti-GFA self-publicists and Loyalist paramilitary elements that were leaning on the tactics of 2012’s flag protests to rile people up. Plastering images of Shankill bomber Sean Kelly alongside the face of John Finucane and Claire Hanna was a spectacularly tasteless own goal and a slap in the face to victims and their families. It was a massive miscalculation on their part, and something that the Ulster Unionist Party were able to avoid association with almost entirely. It’s not necessarily that those same people who were angry about the Union flag on Belfast City Hall don’t still hold those beliefs. However, perhaps they may well not buy into that brand of narrow, self-centred Loyalism which is not known for delivering results.

As an ardent Unionist myself, and someone who has grown up and lives in a community that would ordinarily be a DUP heartland, I often feel like I’m constantly telling the Emperor that he has no clothes on. It’s a lonely place to be at times, but it appears that in this election, I wasn’t the only one who believed that the DUP are bad for Unionism.

Unionism is supposed to be about being stronger together, about the power of working as a united community and advocating as one voice for better outcomes. It’s always been my belief that those who are happy to march Loyalists up to the top of the hill and leave them there are no more interested in bettering outcomes for Protestant, working class communities than they are interested in delivering a United Ireland.

The DUP’s decision to be seen as throwing their lot in with these elements may have cost them dearly in constituencies where they relied heavily on soft Unionists and more socially conservative Nationalists to hold onto their seats against the threat of Sinn Fein candidates and abstentionist MPs. The personal attacks on certain candidates galvanised support behind them, energised their activists and elicited sympathy and ultimately created a watershed moment for undecided voters to throw their support behind parties they would have otherwise not voted for. By painting candidates from those parties as part of a Republican conspiracy and acting as though their own candidates were entitled to those seats by right, the DUP alienated SDLP and Alliance voters that would have been, for a more humble and conciliatory campaign from the DUP, fertile ground in which to dig in an effort to get their vote out.

With the Conservatives enjoying the largest majority since Thatcher won a landslide in 1983 the DUP are about as relevant and necessary to the Government’s Brexit plans as Change UK (remember them?). The DUP have again been waxing lyrical in the press about a proposed bridge to Scotland, but they’d be better served by trying to build a bridge between their policies and the electorate; they could have asked Theresa May to fund a bridge between Carrickfergus and the Moon and she would have obliged had they supported her deal, but they got carried away on their own hype and blew it.

So what now?

Well the DUP have significant questions to answer about what the direction of their party is, what lessons they need to learn from their handling of the Brexit debacle in Stormont and how they can extend their reach from beyond their traditional base, if at all possible. It will be a potentially insurmountable mountain to climb with Arlene Foster as leader, and the party is potentially listless without any safe seats left in Northern Ireland as the Alliance Party start to snap at their heels.

They will need to significantly rehabilitate and detox their image, and start to seriously consider the calibre of individuals they are selecting for election with the likes of Dale Pankhurst and Marc Collins having massively dented their credibility amongst soft Unionist voters with their remarks and behaviour around housing and community relations.

Whether they can effectively claw back that support and significantly motivate their base ahead of any Assembly election remains to be seen. But the fall of the DUP has been a long time coming and I hope, for their sake and nothing else, that they can turn their fortunes around. Northern Ireland is a changed place, and with it there are changed attitudes as to what people want to see in their elected representatives.