After a second night of violence in Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus, the situation in Northern Ireland should be setting political alarm bells ringing, but I doubt it is.
The rioters are so-called loyalists, dismayed by a border down the Irish Sea between them and the rest of the UK. They feel betrayed, as they have been by a PM and a party that pushed for Brexit regardless of the consequences. The loyalists’ own leaders the DUP, hold a lot of the blame for this, using NI electoral law to secretly syphon money into the leave campaign, pushing for Brexit and supporting Theresa May only after they won massive new funds for pet projects. Pork barrel politics by blind, stupid insensitive and hypocritical schemers, many of whom knew that Brexit was a serious danger to the Good Friday Agreement, a deal they secretly hate and despise.
Now we have the PSNI being used as a political football by people who will condemn violence but always with a “but” afterwards. “'But, we understand their anger”, “but the police were heavy handed”, “but the EU is at fault”, everything but “this is on us”.
The next moves will be vitally important, lots of Brexiteers and the DUP will want to use this violence, or any other excuse to tear up the NI protocol, the PM who negotiated it and called it a triumph should support it but is a liar and a political chancer.
The republican terrorists are meanwhile rubbing their hands in glee. A loyalist terror attack on catholic citizens’ homes, the murder of a border official, heavy handed policing of their own riot “in favour” of the GFA, the death of a “martyr” and many other actions will give them the perfect excuse to escalate, and hope to restart The Troubles.
It won’t take much for the drug pushing, murderous, power hungry psychopaths on both sides to come out of the shadows and if they do the DUP, the Conservatives and the Brexiteers will all say “Who us? Nothing to do with us!”
https://jonty.substack.com/
Loyalist violence has not been very far away in recent years, and often what has been triggering it is reapplied to the rest of the UK a few years later - seemingly treated by Whitehall politicians as a focus group exercise for their base of imperialists on the mainland. The most glaring example being the objection to the removal of flags from Belfast City Hall in 2012 that triggered months of unrest, is now forming the Tory party's first major post Covid campaign agenda.
The silence from Britain is deafening, particularly from those to whom the petrol-bombers declare loyalty. One unambiguous sentence from Buckingham Palace would stop the unrest overnight, at which point the leaders of unionism would have to rely on the strength of their own arguments, which is probably what they're afraid of.