Arlene’s backstop balls
United Kingdom , Issue 1481 NO SURRENDER from DUP leader Arlene Foster last week as she visited Brussels to restate her fierce opposition to backstop-type arrangements for Northern Ireland: “We’ve always said there’s only one red line in these matters and that’s when we’re treated differently from the rest of the UK.”

In fact Northern Ireland has long been treated differently in countless ways, from same-sex marriage to abortion. Another of the differences – and one solely brought about by Foster’s own party – is the law of libel.

When parliament passed the Defamation Act 2013, it was expected to be applied in Northern Ireland too by a motion of “legislative consent” at the Northern Irish Assembly. Before that motion could be tabled, however, DUP minister Sammy Wilson secretly blocked it without telling the executive or the assembly.

Out of sync
The DUP was alone among Northern Irish parties in its hostility to the new act. (By happy coincidence, as Eye 1339 noted, party bigwigs such as Peter Robinson and Ian “Baby Doc” Paisley Jr were themselves keen users of the old oppressive law.) When the then Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt tried to get the new law implemented via a private member’s bill, the DUP stalled for time by commissioning a “review” from a legal academic.

Alas for them, the academic concluded that Northern Ireland should indeed have libel reform. Even before he delivered his report, however, it was clear the DUP wanted to remain out of sync with other parts of Britain. As a DUP minister told the assembly in 2015: “I do not think that it would be right to follow the Defamation Act 2013 slavishly.” In the event, she didn’t follow it at all. The minister was Arlene Foster – the woman who cannot accept people in Northern Ireland being “treated differently from the rest of the UK”. Shome mishtake, shurely!