A Tangled Position

Andrew McCann over on A Tangled Web has endorsed Jim Allister for the June 4 Euro elections, not because he believes he can retain his seat, but to simply knock Diane Dodd’s off of topping the polls. Well I'm no DUP fan so Mrs Dodd's top-dog hopes don't much matter to me.

What Andrew McCann, David Vance and Jim Allister really want is to "wreck it" as Ian Paisley once said of the GFA, or at least to get a majority of unionists rejecting the St. Andrews agreement with an unofficial referendum by voting TUV.

"Like David and I, Allister is not interested in reconciliation with physical-force Irish republicanism, only is total and comprehensive defeat."

I'm not sure what point there is to be made from such an outcome, yes I know that they believe getting rid of the Provo’s is an end in its self, but it’s hardly going to render much of a defeat to republicans.

Making them work within partitionist institutions, militarily withering down the PIRA, their lack of support down south and attacks by dissidents; those to me are the only defeat - outside of a bloody and costly military operation Sri Lanka style - that the republicans are going to suffer.

Say confidence is shot and the assembly collapses, yet again. If the Provisional’s retreat back to their shadowy ghettos and their "old ways", blaming rejectionist unionists as they go, what will be the end result? Allister represents the old reactionary unionism, like Paisley of old, yet their reactions are always too late to do much but hope to reverse time to when things were easy to understand.

Now the RIRA are back in town the dismantling of the assembly simply adds Provo fuel to a dissident fire, hardly a great alternative. I'm no great admirer of the executive or Sinn Fein but the alternative is much worse and quite frankly unneeded. Wrecking the relative peace and stability of Northern Ireland for your so-called "principles" is a job better suited to republican hardliners and loyalist terrorists, not Jim Allister.