ANALYSIS: Kingmakers of the world unite: Holding the balance of power at the DUP conference
4 min read
Rumours about 200 journalists descending on the DUP conference this weekend proved rather wide of the mark. But the party doesn’t care.
The buzz that infuses a party on the rise, wielding power which was unimaginable a year ago, is palpable in the conference hall and around the stands at the plush La Mon hotel nestled among the fields outside southern Belfast.
The DUP won a record 10 MPs in June and more votes than it has in the past 30 years. The £1.5bn deal struck with the Tories to keep Theresa May in power has galvanised a membership base excited to have its say on more cash for the region and the direction of the UK at a national level. And there’s no doubt the DUP top brass are grabbing the opportunities with both hands.
The de-facto deputy Prime Minister dropping by to make a couple of bad jokes and the Tory chief whip flying 300 miles to put out a coffee invite are just the optics. Behind the scenes the party holds real power - whether it’s making ultimatums on the Budget or dictating a swift reverse-ferret on a post-Brexit trade border with the rest of the UK.
East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell laughs in the grand hall of the luxury country club as the party wraps up its eve-of-conference dinner. (Soup starter, followed by roast beef, a sorbet and a chocolate sphere.) He notes how a number of amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill have been defeated by around 10 votes. “It’s almost as if we hold the balance of power!” he scoffs.
Later in the conference, Strangford MP Jim Shannon tells me the deal has put the party “on the international stage”. He adds: “The whole feeling is that we are influential. We can influence the Conservatives in a direction we want them to go.” East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson hails the “buzz about the place” and the excitement about the prospects for Northern Ireland.
Wilson is spot-on that the enthusiasm has bled into the membership. Supporter Ronnie - who wanders the stands in a Union Jack sweater - says the event is a big step forward on last year. ”I think it’s very good to hold the balance of power in Westminster,” he says, plainly. 20-year-old activist Sarah meanwhile notes: “It’s a lot bigger this year - a lot more people are about. Probably because the past election was really good for us.” She coos: “It’s really good; I’m loving it.”
In the main hall, speeches by the party's big guns galvanise the membership further. Deputy leader Nigel Dodds - named negotiator of the year by The Spectator for his part in agreeing the arrangement with the Conservatives - crows that the “very existence” of the Government depends on his team. He adds that the election result and subsequent deal was a gift from God - a reminder of the evangelical Christian tendency in the party that angered so many outside Northern Ireland in the frenzied days after the election.
In her keynote address, leader Arlene Foster lists victories already in the bag; on the pensions triple lock and cash for farmers to ease them through Brexit. She vows to harness the DUP influence for the whole of the UK and not just for Northern Ireland, as she declares: “Our unionism doesn't end at the Irish Sea.” Her entrance and exit music is Get Ready For It by TakeThat – fittingly used in a 2014 action comedy called Kingsman. Unsurprisingly, on the ongoing political stasis at Stormont which leaves Foster as a First Minister without a government, all the blame gets heaped on Sinn Fein.
And of course, the row between unionism and republicanism seeps into the new-found DUP power as it does into every facet of Northern Irish politics. The sense that the hung parliament and the deal it bore has knocked the nationalist cause back lingers like fairy dust amidst the DUP excitement. North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jr puts the coup in its starkest terms. “Theresa May will go down in history as the woman who called the election that saved the union,” he says. “And I think that’s given us a renewed optimism and a renewed hope in our beloved union.”
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