The BBC headlines on Saturday, September 21st 2024, indicated that in truth it is ‘NO CHANGE’ at DUP HQ!
DUP leader pledges new approach in conference speech
There can be no change within the DUP if it does not acknowledge that it has been promoting the wrong policies, evil polices, and pursuing them by deceitful and devious ways!
The DUP leader may now be claiming that the ‘approach’ will be different, but the DUP under him is still going to seek to promote that which is utterly in opposition to the mind and will of God for nations, great and small, as set forth in His Word!
This is mere chicanery!
Gavin Robinson opened his speech with an undertaking to serve his people. He claims that he will ‘chart a path for a stronger tomorrow’! He says he is ‘optimistic’ for the future. Given the recent events within the ranks of the DUP, hoping for anything short of WW III, would show optimism!
He refers to the last six months as ‘difficult, challenging’. That is rather a euphemistic way in which to refer to the recent past! Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, his predecessor, resigned at Easter after being charged with historical sex offences, and the DUP lost three seats in the Westminster election.
For the DUP leader to acknowledge the last six months as being merely “difficult and challenging” is an evidence of the degree of ‘self-delusion’ within the DUP ranks!
‘Charting a new path’ cannot be accomplished by sticking to a path which involves embracing the devil’s lies and depravities and rejecting God’s truth. That is what is entailed in the present political ‘menu’ the DUP offers to Ulster.
That ‘menu’ includes:
(1) support for government in partnership with IRA-terrorist honouring Sinn Fein.
(2) the embracing and endorsing of sodomy and its allied corruptions.
(3) ignoring the deceitful claims of deliverance from Westminster’s ‘Brexit ‘sham’ and then a lying cover-up and denial when that double-dealing is exposed!
Letter
In a letter published in the ‘Belfast News Letter’ under the heading: ‘Jamie Bryson: The Irish Sea border remains, and the DUP are implementing it’, Mr Bryson, an associate of Mr Jim Allister MP, leader of the TUV, in the battle against the implementation of a border in the Irish Sea, thus separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, said:
‘Gavin Robinson was front and centre in regards the Surrendering the Union deal. . . . It’s accepted by everyone that the manner the DUP sold that deal had no reflection to the reality of what they had achieved, or perhaps more accurately not achieved. . . . The reality is that the DUP are fully fledged Protocol implementers. They are operating institutions which embeds and legitimises a border in the Irish Sea, hoping that the issue will just fade away and they can get on with enjoying the trappings of power. Today every unionist will be seeking some truth from Mr Robinson. This means an acceptance that the DUP misled the unionist community, that the Irish Sea border remains and an explanation as to how the DUP, as a unionist party, justifies implementing the subjugation and suspension of the Union.’
Another campaigner against the ‘Windsor Framework’, Mr Owen Polley, has said in an article headed: The delay to the parcels border shows the seriousness of the Windsor Framework, also in the ‘Belfast Newsletter, states:
‘As this disaster unfolds, there is a sense of resignation, even among unionists, who believe that nothing can be done to stop the framework. (It should be stated that it is almost impossible to understand what the Westminster government agree to in its ‘Brexit deal’. It is known by so many confusing and ambivalent titles and is enmeshed in so much legal ‘mumbo-jumbo’ that few can really fathom what it is all about, apart from the obvious fact that it is detrimental to our position in the UK! — The BB Editor) For that reason, perhaps, there has been little discussion of what is happening. But it won’t be possible to ignore the issue indefinitely.
The Northern Ireland Protocol included a ‘democratic consent’ mechanism for the Irish Sea border, which Stormont is due to vote on later this year. As the former DUP policy chief, Dan Boucher, who is now in the TUV, pointed out in the News Letter last week, the usual requirements for cross-community consent at the Assembly were waived for this motion on the behest of the EU.
That was effectively intended to gerrymander the result, so that the protocol arrangements would stay in place with only the support of nationalists and Alliance. It was a scandal that was barely mentioned, because it was inflicted on unionists.
The Assembly (Stormont) is, in any case, effectively being asked to endorse agreements that cede control of vast swathes of public policy to the EU, which we are not a part of and over which we have no democratic control.
Mr Boucher says that the legality of that is highly questionable, never mind the ethical questions it raises. Surely all politicians should be bothered by that, whether they are unionist, nationalist or other?’
Political ‘Darwinian’
Gavin Robinson is primarily a ‘political evolutionist’! He believes that Unionism can lift itself by its own ‘boot laces’, or as he enticingly puts it, their own ‘efforts and dedication’. That is a philosophy diametrically opposed to what God says is the means of advancing and bettering our civil and social wellbeing.
The Lord says: “Righteousness exalteth a nation,” Proverbs 14:34. The other side of the coin is also found in that verse. “Sin is a reproach to any people.”
There is no exception to this rule! “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain,” Psalm 127:1.
Gavin Robinson is “a foolish man” who would build “his house upon . . . sand,” Matthew 7:26. We all surely know what became of that foolish venture!
I believe it is vain to hope that the DUP will ever truly acknowledge its deceit regarding the part it presently plays in implementing the shifting of the border from where it belongs, between us and the Irish Republic, to where it most certainly does not belong, in the Irish Sea, thus effectively removing us from full membership of the United Kingdom.
Shame and Reproach
We have God’s clear warning that the policies that Gavin Robinson adheres to will bring ‘reproach’. That word means, as Matthew Poole puts it, “contempt and ruin upon them by provoking both God and men against them.”
Do we not see that such is the situation into which Ulster’s Unionist people have been led in recent years! Under Gavin Robinson’s leadership they will but sink even further into ignominy!
The speech was the usual 40 minutes of bombast and boastful declarations of planned great advances and a future filled with success. Clapping abounded, which indicates the readiness of the gullible to appear enthusiastic in swallowing the same garbage as they have clapped before — all to no avail then and it will prove to be so again!
He ended with the declaration that he has no interest in joining those who would challenge the errors of Unionism. This was loudly applauded. That is strange coming from one who is a lawyer, a profession linked to challenging ‘error’ and seeking to stamp it out!
But here is one lawyer who simply wants to heedlessly swim in the polluted waters of disastrous policies and shut his ears to the dangers, pointed out to him repeatedly regarding that which is glaringly obvious.
One political commentator, Suzanne Breen, said of the conference: ‘DUP conference was the flattest one I’ve ever been at… the party is in rebuild mode’.
The report begins: ‘Belfast’s Crowne Plaza Hotel has been the scene of countless DUP dramas, but the mood at its annual conference on Saturday was strikingly subdued.
Some 200-odd delegates gathered to hear Gavin Robinson make his first speech as leader — around half the number that usually attend the event. Numerous councillors and grassroots members clearly chose to swerve the gig. In over three decades covering DUP conferences, this was the flattest one I’ve ever been at.
It had the feel of a box-ticking exercise for the leadership. The days of sparkle and showmanship are gone, at least for now.’
In other words, it was rather a ‘damp squib’! But then it has rained a lot of late and Mr Robinson has been called a ‘political wet’, so I suppose that such an outcome was to be expected!
The brink of a ‘Niagara Falls’ of political ruination is all that this ‘new’ leader will usher his blind, subservient flock toward! But sadly, the blindness of the leadership is shared by the party members it would appear, for lemming like they hasten at his heels toward the brink!
The old saying is true: ‘There are none so blind as those who do not want to see’!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
25th September 2024