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Last broadcast on Thu, 12 Nov 2009, 23:45 on BBC One (Northern Ireland only) (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Did they u-turn or did they not? The UUP challenge the DUP on their views on the retention of the full time police reserve. Is the decline of the local newspaper market damaging the quality of political journalism? Margaret Ritchie expands on her pitch for the leadership of the SDLP.
If You Ask Me by Fionola Meredith
Jim Allister of the TUV is clearly not a man to be messed with. The former barrister is like a nimble-footed rottweiler, never missing an opportunity to out-manoeuvre the DUP and then sink his fangs in. I think he likes the taste of DUP blood. Off he went again on a radio debate on Monday, when he challenged Jeffrey Donaldson to say there would be no devolution of policing and justice powers unless Chief Constable Matt Baggott reverses his decision on the full-time police reserve.
Continued...
Sure enough, wee Jeffrey fell for Jim’s cunning trap, much to the delight of Mr Allister, who lost no time getting the interchange up on his personal You Tube page, and crowing about it loudly on Twitter.
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Jim’s a genuine red-blooded hard-nosed hardliner, you see. He’s super tough, never afraid to whip out the pious rhetoric and beat his opponents around the head with it. Just look at that self-righteous TUV slogan, “nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right”.
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What a guy. This is Jim’s love-call to the unionist heartlands, the moral philosopher making his great stand of truth and justice and freedom against grubby, terrorist-soiled political expediency. But what he really wants to do is trip the DUP up and watch them go splat.
Continued...
He has his wee jokes too, for the faithful to have a chortle at. At his party’s annual conference address, he quipped that Peter Robinson was not suffering from political swine flu, but from TUV-itis. Boom boom, Jim. It’s the way you tell them.
Continued...
But that’s all part of the tradition that Jim’s channelling – making snide side-swipes at your political opponents through the medium of rubbish jokes was once a DUP speciality, mainly courtesy of Sammy Wilson. There’s a bit more work required here though. Jim’s funnies make Sammy sound like Oscar Wilde.
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And at least Sammy had a twinkle in his eye. Jim just looks like he wants to eat you.
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Yet every politician, even Teflon-coated ones like Jim, has their tender spot. And with Allister and his fellow TUV-ers, I detect a certain curious sensitivity about age.
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It showed on Jim’s Twitter feed during the TUV conference, when he chirped “Great conference today. So many young able speakers”. Young? Are you sure about that? Looking at the conference delegates, what I saw was an excess of grey hair, jowls and baldy heads, mostly belonging to men the wrong side of 40. Yes, I did spot two young blondes sitting rather incongruously in their midst, like roses on a gnarled old thorn bush. But any kind of youth wing was very clearly absent.
Continued...
And that’s significant. Because in rehearsing the noisy rejectionist role the DUP played for so many years, without coming up with a viable alternative to the current political set-up, the TUV risks looking like yesterday’s men - old-fashioned, frustrated and disconnected, with little to offer. As the DUP eventually discovered, that’s the trouble with always saying no. You just go round in circles getting older and angrier until the time comes when it’s too late.
Credits
- Presenter
- Noel Thompson
- Producer
- Mary Kelly
Broadcasts
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Thu 12 Nov 200919:30
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Thu 12 Nov 200923:45
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