After Garvaghy recklessness has a price: Burrows and the new unionist competition

“…when faced with  a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead,  usually without noticing the substitution.”
— Daniel Kahneman

It’s worth running the various responses to the Garvaghy Road stand off on the Unionist side of the argument under the same long peace rubric we did for nationalism, not least because, according to the limited polling we have available, the internal unionist contest looks like it could actually be competitive for the first time in a generation.

Back in November 2003 DUP almost overtook the UUP in the Assembly elections largely by accusing it of weakness. However it took the defection of three UUP MLAs (including two who would go to be DUP leaders, Arlene Foster, and the now disgraced Jeffrey Donaldson) the following January to make up the numbers needed to replace them as leaders of unionism.

The irony is once it did its own deal it then spent years looking over its shoulder at the TUV, which made the same accusation against the DUP. Back then the one way to lose votes was to look soft. So every crisis produced the same response: harder words, the flag protest, and ultimately the Brexit walkout. Opponents could predict what they would do, and planned around it.

The UUP could be safely dismissed as incompetent also-rans who could be counted upon to buckle and/or conform. However, in less than a year, Jon Burrows has introduced significant pressure from the other (pro Agreement) direction. For the first time in a generation a unionist party has made restraint look like strength, and the leader given a hearing in the media while doing it.

In our 2003 study on the future of unionism (after the Stormont collapse but before the eclipse of the UUP) we referenced an idea known as the Prisoners’ Dilemma as a means of building trust where none previously existed. In the early 80s Robert Axelrod invited game theorists to submit computer programmes (or strategies) to a tournament of repeated prisoner scenarios.

Where two sides must keep dealing with each other, he found the best approach was to never be first to break faith, to respond firmly when the other side does, and to go back to cooperating as soon as the other side stops. Approaches that only punish do badly over time, and so do approaches that never push back. Too loose you get walked over, too hard you get left behind.

Too often unionism has taken the harder line with what it saw as a recalcitrant nationalism party so that when it responded firmly but stayed at the table it was seen as weak (Peter Robinson’s in/out hokey cokey protest over the 2016 murder of Kevin McGuigan being a perfect example), while walking out was praised as principled, even when walking out achieved nothing.

The system has periodically pushed unionist leaders towards the very strategy that was most likely to fail.

In this narrow regard, the Garvaghy Road crisis was a fair test of how unionism would deal with what Axelrod calls a defection. Sinn Féin’s First Minister joined a protest against a parade the courts had cleared. That gave unionists a real grievance and a strong argument about the rule of law. The TUV gave the old answer: bring down Stormont unless the parade goes ahead.

Burrows’ was a different one. He called for the dispute to be contained. He told unionists to stay within the law and insisted the police investigation should reach the most senior politicians, including his own party’s if necessary. And he proposed a permanent settlement of the parade issue. His positioning allowed him to tell his story from within the calm eye of the storm.

It was a firm response but one which keeps the institutions running and gave the other side a way to end the dispute. It was also the approach most likely to work, and for once it was put to the public by someone that people were already listening to (see the polling results from July). Previous UUP leaders had also taken moderate positions but were consistently ignored.

The effect on the DUP is the clearest sign that something has changed. Gavin Robinson has told his members that collapsing Stormont would probably help Sinn Féin. He may believe that on its merits, after the cost of past walkouts. But he can now act on that belief with less fear, because there is a credible unionist party making the same case. Yet it’s Burrows setting the agenda.

At the same time, the DUP has lost the freedom to drift towards the TUV without consequence, since moderate unionists now have somewhere else to go. Carla Lockhart’s resignation as a party officer shows the strain this has put on the party. The DUP now must decide which competitor it fears more, because it cannot satisfy both.

For the TUV, the change has a different effect. It clarifies its purpose but limits its reach. It remains the party for those who want Stormont gone. Yet, polling shows most unionists do not want that, so the more clearly the TUV is defined against a confident UUP, the clearer that limit may become (and not even mentioning the fearful cuts that would attend such a collapse).

Moderation has been tried before. David Trimble and Doug Beattie each took the less popular path and both paid for it. Why should this time be different? The answer is circumstance. In the past, restraint meant asking unionists to accept something they disliked. This time it means asking them to insist that everyone, including a Sinn Féin First Minister, obey the law.

That is restraint presented as firmness, and will be far easier to defend on the doorstep.

The UUP still has to prove the change is lasting. Attention is not the same as votes, and there has been no poll since the standoff began. Burrows also needs a programme of action that reaches beyond one dispute in Portadown. But the main point stands. Unionist leaders now face a cost for being reckless, not just for being weak.

That should make unionism less predictable to its opponents and more persuasive to the voters in the middle it needs to win back.

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