The British State has been successful in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again on the Hill at Stormont. The DUP are back in their box again, in the great annex that was created by Westminster in 1921, known as ‘Northern Ireland’. The British State can hopefully return to its business, without the botheration of interference from those of the Ulster outhouse.

The DUP left its box when Theresa May was forced to employ the party as a make weight to ensure a Parliamentary majority, after a miscalculated snap election in 2017. In doing so she breached a fundamental of Westminster in drawing in a ‘Northern Ireland’ party into the British body politic. But needs must, and the greatest need of government, made the Tory confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP a necessity. Although Prime Minster May was to find that the DUP provided little cover when Parliament ran riot over Brexit, believing it knew better than the people.

For years it had been said that the UK was governed by an over-mighty executive and an “elective dictatorship”, in Lord Hailsham’s words. With Prime Minister May dependent on a wafer-thin majority Parliament attempted to govern itself, and failed miserably, leading to Boris Johson being welcomed as a saviour in February 2019, to end the chaos.

The DUP, then led by the other UUP defector, Arlene Foster, sought to ride on the Brexit wave to put clear blue water between ‘Northern Ireland’ and the detested Irish Republic. In doing this it followed John Redmond a century before in interfering in British politics for regional interests. It was the Home Rule crisis of 1910-14, and the near civil war this plunged the UK into, that led to the creation of the ‘Northern Ireland’ annex so that “the Irish parties” could be placed in a form of political quarantine, safely away from the British party conflict.

Redmond’s party was wiped out through its excursion into the British party conflict – the essence of the British system. So the fact that Donaldson has successfully led his party from that particular battlefield, however divided it is, or may become in the coming months, is an achievement indeed.

The DUP rejected Prime Minister May’s attempt at a soft Brexit, raising the stakes in NI over the British withdrawal, and they got burnt.

Boris Johnson, of course, went on to betray the DUP, after attaining his great majority in early 2019, that made UK government possible again, by a Government. Who could have expected otherwise, but a fool? Johnson’s Northern Ireland Protocol in February 2022, aimed at cleansing Britain of the Ulster interference and establishing normality again at Westminister, led to the DUP walkout from the Big House on the Hill and the latest of Humpty Dumpty’s great falls.

However, the DUP still held out hope of victory, even after Johnson’s demise in the Spring of 2022. The Liz Truss “Brittania unchained” Cabinet of Brexiteers and right-wingers gave hope to the cause of Ulster, with Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost in the band, and ready to fight to widen the Brexit divergence with Europe. And then Brexit House crash! The soft-Brexit tendency in the British State, backed by the City and money markets, managed to turn out the blue water incorruptibles, after a reckless Budget.

The new, unwanted UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, attempted to cover a DUP retreat from British politics, back to the Hill, with the February 2023 Windsor Framework. This attempted to disguise the “Irish sea border” Johnson had created in agreeing the NI Protocol with the EU, with a fairly check-free Green Lane and “Stormont Break”, in which a NI Assembly could object to changes in the future around divergence. However, the DUP Leader, Sir Jeffrey, had, by this time, hung the party on his “7 Tests” hook. This was a kind of Covenant – Ulstermen and women being very fond of Covenants that prevent betrayal and Lundies – that made ordinary compromise difficult, except with subtefuge.

Prime Minister Sunak’s gambit failed to lure the DUP back to their box. So further pressure was applied. NI public servants were denied pay rises in a situation of a spiralling cost of living and inflation crisis. The British shamelessly used nurses, teachers, transport workers, civil servants etc. strikes and industrial action against the DUP by indicating that NI could rot in hell until the DUP went back up the Hill. A great general strike on January 15, cheered on and colluded in by the Westminster Government, through publicly releasing funds for a pay settlement, did the trick. Donaldson, who had by then decided himself that holding out was increasingly damaging to his party, then convinced the 12 Apostles of the DUP and the party officers that a return was necessary.

Donaldson has been fullsome in his praise of PM Sunak in rescuing the party after the Johnson betrayal and the Truss trauma, and getting him off the hook. Donaldson availed of the British about turn on Brexit to complete the DUP climb down from the covenant. The soft Brexiteers have got the ascendancy within the British State and it is a strong probability that this ascendancy will be accentuated by the coming of Sir Keir later in the year to Number 10. Sammy, Nigel, Ian jnr. etc. have been isolated – for now – lest their view that there has been no change in the Irish Sea Border, but words, gains further traction in the Unionist community.

The weight of the British State was thrown against the DUP since the Windsor Framework. Jeffrey Donaldson was forced to either stay in exile or join with the British State after some amount of the 7 tests had been seen to have been met, in the usual British way of double-speak. When Donaldson jumped the weight of the British State was thrown behind the DUP Leader against the DUP remaining loyal to the 7 test covenant, in order to lead the DUP up the Hill and back in the box.

Sammy Wilson said it was “Brexit betrayed”. The Brexit regulatory divergence was now impossible, if the new deal Donaldson had secured was to be believed. Boris Johnson agreed with that. Heaton- Harris said there was “no decrease in the ability to diverge” from Europe. But someone is not telling the truth – discounting collusion from the EU.

The British Government went as far as it dared go in donning its full Unionist regalia to support the DUP’s retreat up the Hill. The lavish praise and backslapping of Sir Jeffrey that the British Government and Parliament organised in the Chamber and in the unionist language of the UK Government Command Paper, “Safeguarding the Union”, really spooked the SDLP. The SDLP at heart are Hibernians and suspect that anything good for Unionists is bad for Nationalists. Colum Eastwood put in a bizarre performance in the House of Commons, complaining at the filletting of the Good Friday Agreement to the detrement of British support for an all-Ireland economy.

The SDLP are, of course, like many delusional Irish, EU Remainers. They feel hard done by that Mother England has decided to go her own way, minus her Irish child, in her own version of Sinn Fein, Brexit. The Irish Remainer hysterics are very problematic for effective politics at this juncture. They involve the importation of an alien ideology that leads to political confusion just as British Socialism disrupted the Official Republican Movement at the vital moment in 1969.

Perhaps if the EU was what it had been that would not be a problem. But the EU is fast heading toward destruction under its current leadership and direction. Britain, as a member, sent it on an expansionary march eastwards, diluting its coherence, and gaining for it an anti-Russian spirit that will probably be the death of it. If Trump wins in November the EU will soon find itself shouldering the fight it took on with Kyiv and it may well stand or fall with Ukraine.

While Colum Eastwood refuses to partake of US hospitality on St. Patrick’s Day due to the American assistance in ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide in Gaza, he has the slave-mind of the Europe of super-Zionist Von der Leyen and her friends.

It seems to be an article of faith of the SDLP that the UK Government will be an “honest broker” or “neutral arbiter” in the communal conflict. They complain that this is what Britain signed up to in the GFA in 1998 and this has been abandoned in the Command Paper of 2024.

But that is for the birds. Britain is out for the British State interest and that can never make it neutral on anything with regard to Ireland. And as for Britain and treaties… Well, only people with no sense of history could believe that Britain sees treaties as anything more than temporary accomodations with the existing realities of power and politics.

And, in fact the GFA only commits the British Government to “rigorous impartiality” in the internal communal conflict within ‘Northern Ireland’ and not between the two parts of Ireland or the UK and the Republic.

The SDLP has never understood that the Good Friday Agreement is not the final destination for nationalists. It is ground that has been won, and hard won, from the British. And it was largely won by the sacrifices of volunteers of the Republican Army and their families, rather than anything the SDLP ever did – aside from the very important contribution of John Hume.

Sinn Fein understands the GFA as a position to be defended and moved forward from. It may be the life’s work of the SDLP but it is not the heart’s desire of the Northern Catholic Community. The power of the Northern Catholic Community lies in its coherence and the political ability of its instrument, Sinn Fein, forged in the transition between war and politics.

There is little doubt that Sinn Fein sees the historic attainment of the position of First Minister in ‘Northern Ireland’ as little more than a power base from which further advance can be facilitated.

Meanwhile the SDLP is retreating to Official Opposition, a delusional position within the conflict-resolution system which is the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Fein have learned well from Britain in its conduct of politics. On the previous occasion in 2016 in which opposition was engaged in by parties, it had a weakening effect on the institutions set up by the GFA. The GFA is fundamentally a conflict resolution/management system which is designed to produce the widest possible participation in government, giving all sections of the population a stake in the system. The SDLP’s second foray into this territory as a lone opposition can only be seen as putting the party against the system which they claim as their main achievement. Of course, this is very much in the spirit of the anti-Hume tendency in the party, which blames Hume’s subordination of party to the interests of community, for the decline in the electoral fortunes of the SDLP.

The SDLP are still the slowest learners, it seems.