Dave fae The Renton

Paddy, I read it very differently, extraordinary way to describe a community increasingly insisting on equality. “Ascendant”, “triumphalist”, “arrogant”, “condescending” — perhaps the real difficulty is that nationalism is no longer prepared to behave like the deferential minority it once was expected to be. For generations, nationalists lived in a state where British identity, symbols and institutions dominated public life, while contentious Orange parades could become enormous political confrontations when nationalist residents said no. Now nationalists have political power, cultural confidence and an expectation that their identity carries exactly the same legitimacy as British and unionist identity. That’s not supremacy. That’s equality. And equality doesn’t require nationalists to forget discrimination, the Troubles or the experiences that shaped their communities simply because they’re no longer politically powerless. Having greater political influence today doesn’t retrospectively erase history. There is also a revealing contradiction here. When unionists confidently celebrate Britishness, the Union, the Orange tradition and their constitutional aspirations, we’re told that’s culture and identity. When nationalists confidently celebrate Irishness, the GAA, their language and their constitutional aspiration, suddenly it’s “ascendant”, “triumphalist” and “arrogant”. Both communities are entitled to their identity. Both are entitled to advocate peacefully for their preferred constitutional future. Neither possesses a right to dominate the other. And perhaps that’s the adjustment some people are struggling with, Nationalism isn’t demanding that unionism kneel. It’s increasingly refusing to kneel itself. If that feels like supremacy, perhaps what Bailey is actually noticing is what equality looks like when the people who once had less power finally expect to be treated as equals.

Ohh Jim, Jim, Jim Jim Jim, this is a fascinating new constitutional principle you’ve discovered, if a politician believes a law or legal framework is wrong and campaigns against it, they have no respect for the rule of law. Does that principle apply retrospectively to you? You spent years opposing the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite it being given legal effect by the sovereign UK Parliament, the parliment you tell us you adore, You didn’t simply say, “That’s the law, therefore I must respect it.” You challenged its legality and constitutionality all the way to the UK Supreme Court. When the Parades Commission, exercising powers given to it by law, made determinations you disagreed with, you didn’t tell unionists to quietly accept them either. In 2013 you called one determination a “farcical Parades Commission decision”, demanded that the Commission be abolished, and argued that the law should instead presume in favour of traditional Orange routes. And perhaps we should go further back. In 1985 you attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front, established amid opposition to police rerouting of loyalist parades. The organisation had UDA involvement, including senior UDA figure John McMichael on its coordinating committee. Then in 1986 you helped organise the rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of Ulster Resistance. You marched at the head of hundreds of loyalists, contemporary accounts describe many wearing paramilitary, style uniforms and some wearing masks, before pledging your “personal support” for Ulster Resistance. You even complained that the RUC had tried to prevent the procession reaching the meeting and celebrated the colour party getting into town another way. So let’s dispense with the rewriting of history. When Jim Allister believed laws, institutions or government arrangements were wrong, he opposed them, protested against them, challenged them in court and campaigned to have them changed or abolished. And he was entitled to do so. Because the rule of law does not require citizens or politicians to believe every law is just. There is a fundamental difference between saying “this law is wrong and I will oppose it” and saying “the law does not apply to me.” If Michelle O’Neill is alleged to have committed an offence, investigate it and let the legal process determine that. But spare everyone the suggestion that simply opposing a law demonstrates contempt for the rule of law. Because by that newly invented standard, Jim, your own political history, from opposition to parade restrictions and the Anglo-Irish Agreement through Ulster Resistance, the Protocol and beyond, would make for some remarkably uncomfortable reading. Opposing laws and institutions you disagreed with was called political principle when you did it. It cannot suddenly become constitutional anarchy when Michelle O’Neill does it.