Dr No in cloud cuckoo land

Daily Ireland:

Famously, nationalists in the old Stormont managed to pass just one piece of legislation in 50 years — an act to protect wild birds. Under the new political institutions envisaged by Ian Paisley, nationalists could not guarantee that they would reach those dizzy legislative heights again in the next half-century.

That is not only bad news for our feathered friends but for everyone who thought that, with a strengthened mandate, Mr Paisley might be the man to make a deal for unionism — and keep his word.

Instead, after yesterday’s tête-à-tête with Mr Blair, the DUP leader spelt out his vision of a one-party state that would bring the North back at least to 1969 and, if the Paisleyites could swing it, to 1690.

Dr No says he cannot share power with Sinn Féin because he does not trust them. But then he proceeds to set out a series of hurdles that Sinn Féin and the IRA must clear before Gerry Adams and Co get to occupy the cheap seats in his revamped Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.

The Good Friday Agreement, says Mr Paisley, is dead. Strangely, just six months ago, he was poised to go into a new executive with Sinn Féin within the very model established by the 1998 Belfast deal. That initiative was scuppered over calls for the IRA to be humiliated and republican reservations over the photographing of decommissioning. But the fact remains that the DUP was signing up for a power-sharing agreement.

The Irish and British governments should call the Democratic Unionist Party’s bluff by insisting that the power sharing with Sinn Féin is the only way forward. Anything else is strictly for the birds.

Paisley represents British colonialism in its purest form and colonists never make compromises with indigenous peoples. The only way to bring peace to the north of Ireland is to repatriate Paisley and his fellow British colonists to Britain as soon as possible.