Mary Kelly: We can but hope the Nixon China theory applies with Edwin Poots – The Irish News
IT’S usually the case that the hand that wields the knife does not wear the crown. But not in Edwin Poots’s case. And he isn’t just wielding the knife, he’s twisting it in, good and proper, first by not having the courtesy to mention Arlene Foster in his victory speech and then trying to shove her out of the first minister position earlier than her planned end-of-June departure. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?
He’s also expected to adopt a slash and burn approach to some of the backroom DUP spads, who’re perceived to be Foster loyalists. All this while proclaiming, despite the 18-16 vote, that the party is united.
I met an Alliance supporter a few hours after the announcement of the Poots win and he couldn’t conceal his excitement that it was good news for his party’s own electoral fortunes to have a dyed-in-the wool Paisleyite traditionalist in charge of the main unionist party.
That Poots is indeed a Paisleyite was in evidence later on Friday night, when Newsnight decided to do a Norn Iron special, and Ian Óg burst on to the screen following the filmed report, to denounce the BBC for mocking Christianity.
Faisal Islam, the stand-in presenter, looked stunned at the onslaught which had the snarling Paisley accuse the programme for “taking the Mickey” out of Mr Poots and had “lambasted” him because he was a man of faith. “You wouldn’t do that if he was a Muslim,” he roared, veins popping, as he tried to be a chip off the old block.
And just like his da, he strained the bounds of credulity. “He [Poots] has never been in a position where he would try to force his faith down your throat or anyone else’s throat,” he thundered. “He would not allow those things to get in the way of how he engages in policy and policy making.”
Oh yeah? How about when he was health minister, spending public money on court challenges to Britain’s overturning of a ban on blood donations from gay men. Or opposition to same sex marriage, gay adoptions or abortion?
He opposes the Northern Ireland Protocol because it makes us different from the rest of the UK. But it’s quite all right to be different when it comes to social policies.
Mr Poots is entitled to his religious beliefs. He’s entitled to believe in creationist theories. But is he entitled to make creationism part of the science curriculum, or to put “alternative interpretations” on the Giant’s Causeway centre? I think not.
One does have to wonder how many times his new deputy, Paula Bradley, will have to be that “critical friend” and have a word in his ear. She might have her work cut out.
Is it true that Pootsy has shown pragmatism in the past? It might be the old Nixon China theory, whereby someone with unassailable credentials among his hardline supporters is able to go further and take risks that someone without that reputation could.
He was said to be the architect of the hastily denied draft deal the DUP did with Sinn Féin to restore the assembly back in 2018 so maybe that pragmatism will be the driving force of the new leader. Hope springs eternal.
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SO FINALLY we are heading towards greater normality. I can’t be the only one looking forward to coffee inside a nice, warm café instead of sitting foundered at exterior tables, dodging downpours, while trying to pretend the Ormeau Road is Paris.
It’s hard to take seriously the warning about “cautious” hugs, from the prime minister, who clearly has shown little caution about physical contact in his chequered past.
It’s also laughable to hear health minister Matt Hancock blame the outbreak of the India variant in Bolton and Blackburn on people not taking the vaccination but no culpability for his government’s slowness in banning travel from India because they were trying to get a post-Brexit trade deal sorted first.
Pakistan and Bangladesh had been put on the red list two weeks before India, even though they were experiencing a much lower rate of infection.
No wonder they’ve put off the inquiry into their handling of the Covid crisis until next spring, by which time they’ll be hoping everyone just wants to put the whole nightmare behind them.
But the trouble with not owning up to your mistakes is that you keep making them. It’ll be bad news for BoJo if he has to delay the much heralded last stage of the relaxation planned for June 21. He doesn’t like to be the bearer of bad tidings. That’s why he took a week to make a half-hearted not quite apology for the Ballymurphy massacre. It’s his government’s approach in a nutshell – too little, too late.