Morning

[smokingboot]

The sky is still waking up, wind rustling through the gardens and woods. R is home, working from the house today. I don't know whether to try to do my work while he's here, or surrender to the truth that it's all going to be a bit noisier and just lark about. I'll see what the volume's like.

The DUP seem set to b*gger up Mrs May's chequers plan; it's almost funny. So last election, May doesn't get her majority and has to court the DUP big time, to the tune of £1.5 billion in order to have a 'confidence and supply' arrangement with 10 MPs, ie a guarantee that those MPs will vote with the government when necessary. Some remonstrate saying it's a bribe; no, no, says the govt, it will all go towards the people of Northern Ireland, who are quite poor and that's important... So poor and so important to the tories there was no mention of this donation in their manifesto, it just turned up as a wondrous afterthought. But now of course, the DUP are having conniptions about even the merest hint of a border between the NI and the mainland, and are threatening to vote down the budget. Whereupon the government turns around and says that this would be in breach of the agreement and the £1.5 billion would have to be paid back!

It grows more toxic not less. The DUP can probably bring Theresa May down, and that would be their hope, to put Boris or some other hard line Brexiter in her place. But in that event, her party would have 14 days to put a government together and there's no guarantee that anyone available could command the confidence of the house. That would mean an election, which might bring about PM Corbyn, a Sinn Fein sympathiser.

The murmurs are that we are moving towards a break up of the Union. I have always been against it, because I thought Scotland and NI would be poorer, but one can see why the voices grow loud. The rankness of the current situation is unarguable.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

I've never quite understood why NI isn't a part of the mainland. (Yes, yes, I know it has something to do with religion.)

Surely, more independence votes are just as unfeasible as another Brexit vote?

Though with the price of oil going back up, Scotland's shot at making it alone seems a lot more viable.

[smokingboot]

As I understand it, the initial problem with direct rule of NI from Westminster was that it constituted a democratic deficit deplorable to both sides; protestant or catholic, the people of Northern Ireland had very little say in the laws governing them. I do not really understand the mixture of home rule and direct rule that now seems to affect N.I. Certainly for all the DUP's declarations that there must be no difference between NI and the mainland, the laws there are very different pertaining to abortion, same sex marriages, employment etc.

Re the Indyref, One of the major reasons touted for Scotland not leaving the Union was to stay within the EU. It convinced a lot of people. In May 2016, The Scottish Nationalist Party got back into power with the mention in their manifesto of a second indyref in the case of a 'significant and material' change, such as Brexit. They won on that manifesto. In June of that year, those conditions came to pass.

Now Scotland is being forced out of the EU against the will of its electorate and being tethered to a course of action which many say will make Britain poorer. NI is in the same position, only its peace as well as its prosperity is in jeopardy because the Good Friday Agreement is under threat.

Scotland and Ireland are not being treated with any respect by Westminster. Seriously I believe the Union is in danger, and perhaps if this arrogance and hubris is what lies at its heart, it deserves to be.