Denzil McDaniel: Will everybody get what nobody wants as a year of political crisis unfolds?

In this week’s Sunday Independent, Rodney Edwards revealed that days before the decision, party leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson met the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) a group that represents the UVF, UDA and Red Hand Commando.

He also met senior members of the Orange Order, whose Grand Secretary the Rev. Mervyn Gibson was interviewed at length on Radio Ulster’s Talkback last week, during which he said the Protocol was a greater danger to the Union than the years of IRA violence.

He also believes there can be no return to the Executive until the Protocol goes, raising the spectre of an end to devolution here for a very long time.

Jim Allister has also been given considerable airtime and the TUV leader has made it clear that his only gripe with the DUP decision is that it didn’t come sooner.

Loyalist commentator Jamie Bryson supports the DUP withdrawal and clearly hopes that, not only can the Protocol be somehow scrapped, but that a major overhaul of the Good Friday Agreement is on the cards….at the very least, if not the complete abandoning of an Agreement which he and Allister have detested for years.

It's quite the line-up, and is designed to raise the stakes and move the Protocol centre stage in the upcoming Assembly election, which we now know won’t be early.

With election day on May 5 being 12 weeks away, with their action in withdrawing Paul Givan as First Minister last week and Edwin Poots ordering an end to 'Irish Sea Border' checks, the DUP hopes that the longer-than-usual election campaign will be dominated by crisis and fear.

After a disastrous year for the party, much of it self-inflicted by the ousting of Arlene Foster debacle, they faltered in the polls; they were haemorrhaging votes to the TUV on one side, and either Alliance or the UUP on the other.

The strategists have obviously decided to go after the harder line vote, raising the stakes over the Protocol while creating doubt over devolution if Sinn Fein capture the First Minister position. Highlighting the evils of southern Irish politicians is an added bonus.

It’s a gamble, a high-risk strategy. But it’s straight from the old DUP playbook so don’t bet on it not working. Whatever is going on between the various camps within the DUP, expect a united front when it comes to bunkering down in election mode. They clearly believe they are going where the Unionist vote is, and who’s to say they are wrong?

While we know that this is the DUP plan, it also raises many questions. Who speaks for Unionism? And will this see a further increase in disillusioned pro-Union people who simply don’t see the point of voting?

Indeed, what implications are there for wider society who see other issues in their everyday lives as more important than the Protocol? Does this become the election when people start to vote for those issues, rather than along tribal lines?

What happens after the election to Stormont, and will we face direct rule from a Westminster dominated by English Nationalism? And what does it all mean for the united Ireland debate, or even the hopes for sharing Northern Ireland?

It would be wrong to dismiss the fact that most Unionists are, at least, concerned about the Protocol. While there doesn’t appear to be a widespread anger about it (and in this area there is surely no desire to have the hard Border of years gone by) the current narrative has made many of them feel uneasy about their constitutional position within the UK.

Doug Beattie’s Ulster Unionists are against the Protocol, but their position is to try to work for a solution. After all, it remains an international agreement between the UK and the EU.

For his pains, the LCC called on the UUP to “start acting like Unionists” an early indication of how febrile this campaign will become. Presumably become wreckers, they mean.

Following the decision last week to pull Paul Givan out of office, the reaction from many parts of society ranged from anger to exasperation. Business leaders, educationalists and senior service figures expressed real concern about the impact.

The Chief Executive of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, Simon Hamilton, a former DUP Minister criticised his former colleagues saying political instability was the last thing business needs.

In particular, those at the top level of the health service working hard to turn it around were hoping that the proposed three-year budgets would allow them to make plans. One consultant was reported in the Irish News as saying Paul Givan’s decision to resign was a “kick in the teeth” for healthcare workers.

Alan Stout, from the British Medical Association also said that everybody had been let down and he told Sunday Politics on the BBC that it was like a balloon being burst; the hope that health was more important than party politics appears dashed.

And it’s not just health service leaders, the public are fed up suffering pain on waiting lists, with concerns over the delays in mental health and cancer strategies, worries over GP service and so on and so on.

The Executive planned an expert group to draw up an action plan to deal with issues facing education. What happens to our children’s future now?

Women’s Aid issued a statement saying they were “incredibly disappointed….when so many key decisions are going through Stormont to help protect women , children and young people who are experiencing domestic abuse.”

All these issues, and many more such as people struggling to survive financially, are surely far more important to many people than the game of party electoral politics that will be played out with the Protocol at the front and centre. Yet will these very important matters decide the election?

The system mitigates against it.

At the Assembly election of 2017, about 1.2 million people in Northern Ireland were entitled to vote. Remarkably, or perhaps not, nearly 400,000 of them did not vote at all.

Of those who did vote, the most plumped for the DUP who garnered about 225,000 first-preference votes.

A respectable figure you may think, and we can argue all day long about the system and the reasons why people don’t vote; but at the end of the day, the party with barely 18 per cent of those entitled to vote is making major decisions for everyone which involves the possibility of bringing down Stormont.

And the man with apparently massive influence in driving the DUP agenda in 2022, Jim Allister’s TUV gained about 20,000 votes in 2017, about 1.5 per cent.

Sinn Fein, who took the decision in early 2017 to resign the Deputy First Minister position and effectively bring down the Executive, had fewer than the DUP on 224,000.

Arlene Foster became First Minister in 2016 and left the post last May; over those five years the Assembly didn’t sit in 2017, 2018 and 2019, only resuming after a 'New Decade, New Approach' deal. As the commentator, Jon Tonge said: “They got the first two words right.”

We should be careful not to denigrate all politicians, there are many people of goodwill working hard. But the party system and the unique divisions of this place over identity feeding into the party system doesn’t make for good government for the all the people.

People are rightly frustrated and say “we deserve better”, but with little accountability generally and certainly at the ballot box, we either get results which don’t reflect our bread and butter concerns, or more likely again no government at all.

The irony of this is that we could all end up with a situation that nobody wants; decisions about our well-being being taken by Boris Johnson and his rich English Nationalist cronies, who couldn’t give a toss about us.

One gets the feeling that some of those lining up behind a strategy to collapse Stormont would quite happily accept being living hand-to-mouth with poor direct rule, as long as those Shinners don’t get to rule a Stormont which isn’t delivering for Unionists anyway.

Democracy, eh?