Immoral DUP deal has put the Union’s future in great danger

LETTERS

EVEN without the inducement of £150 million for the support of each of the DUP’s 10 MPs, this would still be the “grubby deal” your many correspondents describe (“Outcry over May’s ‘grubby’ £1bn power pact with DUP”, The Herald, June 27). Rarely if ever do I agree with Iain A D Mann (Letters, June 27) but he hit the nail squarely and firmly on the head.

A financial inducement, if paid by a politician for an elector’s vote, is a criminal offence. This “grubby deal” may not be illegal but it lacks morality.

I have been a lifelong Tory and, since the rise of the SNP, a staunch Unionist. But this “grubby deal” really makes me question both loyalties. Theresa May, with a stroke of the pen, has done more to loosen the ties of the Union than any single politician before her; and all for selfish party advantage.

The DUP is not a pleasant party; it stands for many things I find repulsive, and of choice I most certainly would not vote for it. As the saying goes, politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows.

Sinn Fein, for whom I hold no candle, rightly claims the UK Government has breached the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). How can it possibly adhere to its binding legal obligation under the GFA to be impartial when it buys its love from the DUP by the vote?

I cannot believe that, for party advantage, Mrs May so easily puts at risk such a hard and bloodily won peace. Mrs May has sown more of the seeds of the reunification of Ireland.

And what of the 13 Scottish Tory MPs? What value does Mrs May put on them, I wonder? Does Mrs May really think that they were returned because of an upsurge of belief in Scotland in Tory ideology? The SNP will rightly remind the electorate that Mrs May’s strong and stable government bedded with the DUP – no harm to the people in Northern Ireland – for its support to maintain power whilst denying any similar benefit to Scotland but simply took their new Tory MPs’ support for granted.

I feel sorry for David Mundell – I don’t think he lied. I think he genuinely believed that Scotland could expect a similar payment under the Barnett formula. But given his pre-deal assurance that he would not let Barnett be circumvented, his only course, as an honourable man, is to resign.

And I feel sorry for Ruth Davidson – her sterling job in resuscitating the Tories’ support in Scotland was on the single issue of sending Ms Sturgeon the message of no second independence referendum. But the “grubby deal” totally undermines Ms Davidson. These recently converted Tory voters will be entitled to think that Mrs May simply takes them for granted without value. Their support will evaporate like mist in the morning sun back to the SNP at the next election.

I have to ask myself whether I, a lifelong Tory, want to support a party so desperate to cling to power that it prostitutes itself to the DUP rather than have the moral courage and honourable conviction to risk standing as a minority government on their own two feet and on their own principles.

I fear the Union’s days are numbered.

Alasdair Sampson, The Pines, 7a Loudon Street, Stewarton, Ayrshire.

SO what now for the hubris of the Scottish Conservative (oh ... and Unionist) Party? Certainly the Unionist part of the name has come home with a vengeance. Following an election in which Ruth Davidson positively luxuriated in delivering 13 MPs to Westminster (out of 59) she now finds herself in the position where that contribution is rendered meaningless in comparison to the 10 members of a political party who at best, may be described as prescribing to values of questionable provenance.

Over the past few weeks and months Ms Davidson has become omniscient, willing to appear at the opening of an envelope, yet her silence over the last 48 hours has been tumbleweed drifting through Tombstone.

The Scottish Secretary, having vehemently announced that he would not tolerate any financial settlement that breached the rules, now claims the DUP deal is “transparent”. So that’s alright then …

Politics is a dirty business but there must be at least a facade of integrity. While both Labour and the SNP offer the occasional gesture in that direction (the jury’s out on the LibDems while Alistair Carmichael remains an MP) the actions of the Tories over the recent past have been contemptible. Starting with the EU referendum to silence their “English nationalist” wing (courtesy Michael Heseltine); then Theresa May calling an election, after stating repeatedly she would not, in direct contravention of the spirit of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act; and then entering into an agreement with the despicable DUP to sustain their hold on power has shown their interest to be entirely self-serving.

Th Government’s palpable incompetence in even these early stages of “Brexit” negotiations, the lack of intelligence or competence in its ministers only offset by their overweening ambition, selfishness and vanity, (Mrs May, Boris Johnson, David Davis, Liam Fox, Michael Gove anyone?), must, surely at some point cause there to be a point where the scales fall from the eyes of the electorate, and the emperor’s new clothes are revealed in all their glory.

Finally, in the Scottish context, perhaps Ruth Davidson and David Mundell should step aside from their political ambitions long enough to consider their personal values and ask themselves whether these are reflected in a party that willingly and openly enters into an operating agreement with an organisation that would discriminate against them and which sought a commitment from the Parliament which they serve to support such discrimination?

In the words of that truly great politician and man Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Bill Mitchell, Ardelve, Kyle.

SO Nicola Sturgeon whines on about the “grubby” deal of £1 billion that the DUP has extracted from the Tories in exchange for supporting the Government at Westminster.

I’d suggest Ms Sturgeon wouldn’t have been above a similar arrangement if a minority Labour Government had been elected on June 8. A demand for a second independence referendum on the SNP’s timetable springs to mind.

Martin Redfern, Merchiston Gardens, Edinburgh.