Unionists are counting on Sinn Féin proving a fiasco in office and damaging republican project

Loyalists used to call the late Ian Paisley the Grand Old Duke of York for marching them up hills then leaving them there. Jeffrey Donaldson, the current DUP leader, appears to have Paisleyed himself.

The latest quarterly LucidTalk poll for the Belfast Telegraph shows the party’s support up two points to 28 per cent, its highest in three years and just three points below Sinn Féin, whose support was unchanged.

This is a triumph for Donaldson – the DUP was on 13 per cent in the same poll after he became leader in 2021. However, unionists are rallying around the DUP because of unrealistic expectations of its Stormont boycott. According to the poll, 72 per cent of DUP voters and 62 per cent of all unionists think the DUP should not restore devolution until the Windsor Framework is scrapped, something the party cannot deliver and has been careful never to promise. How can Donaldson lead unionism down off his hill, having been rather too successful at leading everyone up?

A starting point would be some perspective on the poll. LucidTalk obtained similar results in April, the last time it asked the question, yet different results the month before when it asked a slightly different question. Only a third of unionists and 52 per cent of DUP voters wanted a boycott until the Framework was “removed completely”.

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LucidTalk has a strong track record predicting elections, but its online panel method depends on politically engaged people, which may produce odd answers to specific questions. Politically engaged unionists must know the framework will not be scrapped. Are they simply proclaiming their dislike for it, whatever the DUP decides to do?

Donaldson could reassure colleagues the 28 per cent support figure is a solid finding, while the boycott results should be taken with a pinch of salt. That would require a degree of confidence neither he nor his party seem to possess. Nervously poking through opinion polls is emblematic of the febrile state of the DUP, fearful of its own supporters and its own factions.

The framework has repaired the EU-UK relationship, a genuine achievement that helps it address sea border problems, but it remains a political affront and a practical absurdity. Few unionists can have any enthusiasm for it

Although Donaldson wants to end the boycott, it is a more sustainable position than many outside unionism appreciate. The framework has repaired the EU-UK relationship, a genuine achievement that helps it address sea border problems, but it remains a political affront and a practical absurdity. Few unionists can have any enthusiasm for it.

The general view of vaguely engaged people is that devolution’s collapse is hastening a border poll and a united Ireland. Naturally, nationalist parties have encouraged this perception but Leo Varadkar gave it a more realistic assessment two weeks ago, saying a Border poll is a “quite distant” prospect.

A more imminent threat held over the DUP’s head is of an enhanced role for Dublin, a “Plan B” as Varadkar has called it, or a form of joint authority, as the SDLP and others have demanded. This is implausible on the timescale of even a protracted boycott, as any meaningful new role for Dublin would require renegotiating the Belfast Agreement.

Last week, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said the hope of Stormont’s return has “ebbed” and he will shortly be asking London for “clarity” on “next steps” as to how Northern Ireland will be governed. His restrained language reflected the fact there are only two broad answers: continuing the present limbo or reintroducing direct rule.

The DUP has an obvious incentive to wait for a UK Labour government to start making the framework redundant, by realigning Britain with the EU. Donaldson’s party has been warned by the UUP, among others, that this could mean dealing with a Sinn Féin government in Dublin.

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Comments this week by Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s leader in the House of Lords, reveal why not all unionists are as concerned by this scenario as might be expected. A Sinn Féin government’s policy on Israel and Palestine would “cause real problems with the EU,” he told the News Letter. “I don’t think they realise what’s going to hit them.”

Much of unionism is quietly counting on the belief that Sinn Féin will be such a fiasco in office it will set back the republican project, north and south, for a generation. This might be a desperate hope but a similar scenario has just played out in Scotland. All hapless Scottish unionism had to do was leave the SNP free to destroy itself.

The Stormont boycott remains a serious strategic mistake by the DUP. It may be growing its support within unionism but its behaviour is shrinking unionism overall and earning contempt in London, Dublin, Brussels and beyond. The union must be suffering long-term damage and unionism gets nothing in return: the framework will be implemented anyway.

But the DUP’s self-interest and inability to untangle that from unionism’s interests, could keep Donaldson stuck on the hill a while longer.