Theresa Mayโs general election gamble has seen a little-thought-of and highly controversial party thrust into the spotlight: Northern Irelandโs Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Having failed to gain enough seats to form a majority the Conservative Party has turned to the DUP, which won 10 seats, to create an alliance and give the Tories the ability to govern as aย minority.
While the two parties are said to still be โin discussionsโ over a possible agreement, ย the decision to try and strike a deal has seen hundreds of protesters descend on Westminster due to the DUPโs stance on abortion, gay rights and climate change. Already more than 500,000 people have signed a petition condemning the Tory-DUP alliance.
The DUP until now hasnโt garnered much attention in the British press but the party has a long history of scienceย denial.
It is a most unusual party for a number of reasons, including its well-documented links to Protestant paramilitary groups and dark money links to the Saudi Arabian intelligence service.
Socially regressive, it has blocked the legalisation of abortion and gay marriage in Northern Ireland and is seen as openly hostile to the LGBT community, as well as being the only political party in Ireland to supportย Brexit.
Scienceย Denial
On science issues, its nearest political equivalent would be the Trump administration in the US. A survey among DUP members found that 40 per cent believed creationism should be taught in scienceย classrooms.
Mervyn Storey, chair of the DUPโs education committee, is also a member of the Caleb Foundation, a Christian fundamentalist creationist pressure group. Its lobbying led the National Trust to controversially include a โyounger Earthโ version of the origins of the Giantโs Causeway at its visitor centre. The Caleb Foundation has also formally objected to museums depicting evolution as an acceptedย fact.
Largely thanks to DUP lobbying, Northern Ireland remains the only part of the UK with no legally binding climate change targets inย place.
Last December, then environment minister, the DUPโs Michelle McIlveen, quashed efforts to introduce a Northern Ireland Climate Change Act. The Social Democratic and Labour Partyโs Mark Durkan described Northern Irelandโs failure to enact climate change laws โ due to a lack of political consensus and obstruction by the DUP โ as anย โembarrassmentโ.
The DUPโs 2017 election manifesto contained not a single mention of the terms โclimate changeโ, โglobal warmingโ or โenvironmentโ. The manifesto talks in general terms about the need for a โsecure and sustainable energy supply for Northern Irelandโ, with the focus on interconnection and development of new generation capacity, but with no indication given of the source of this new energy, other than a welcome for โrecent planning applications for new power stationsโ โ a clear signal that it remains firmly wedded to fossilย fuels.
Despite its generally hostile approach to its immediate neighbour, the Republic of Ireland, the DUPโs election manifesto suggests that, at least regarding electricity, it is not entirely isolationist. Instead it favours the development of an all-island integrated single electricity market as well as the North-Southย Interconnector.
Sammyย Wilson
Perhaps the DUPโs most controversial figure on climate change is former environment minister, Sammyย Wilson.
Among his more bizarre actions was to place a ban on UK government TV and radio adverts that were encouraging people to cut their carbon emissions. Wilson described the ads as insidious greenย propaganda.
Wilson believes the ideas of man-made climate change is a โgigantic conโ and an โhysterical semi-religionโ and denies that there is a scientific consensus on the causes of climateย change.
In 2014, Wilson organised a meeting in the House of Commons in central London on behalf of โRepeal the Actโ, a group that argues the โclimate is always changingโ and seeks to repeal the UKโs Climate Change Act. In attendance were known climate science deniers Peter Lilley, David Davies and Richardย Tol.
And back in 2010 Wilson hosted a group of climate science deniers at the Palace of Westminster for โClimate Fools Dayโ. The event was supported by Labour MP and now Global Warming Policy Foundation member Graham Stringer. One of the event invites read:ย โThe danger is not Climate Change but Climate Change Policy โ for which there is no evidence inย justification.โ
More recently, Wilson, the newly returned MP for East Antrim, welcomed Trumpโs withdrawal from the Paris Accord on climate change as โveryย wiseโ.
He described the climate deal as โtotally flawed and pointlessโ, going on to argue that โpulling out of the (Paris) agreement, which was only a piece of window dressing for climate chancers who wished to pretend that they were doing something about an issue which they canโt affect anyhow, is not the disaster which the green lefties are getting hystericalย aboutโ.
Wilson brings similar levels of enlightenment to his views on LGBT people. โThey are poofs. I donโt care if they are ratepayers. As far as Iโm concerned, they are pervertsโ, he said in response to a request by gay rights activists to hold an event in Belfastโs City Hall inย 1992.
Cash-for-Ash
For a region of the United Kingdom seen as indifferent, even hostile, to climate or environmental regulations, it is hugely ironic that the political crisis that led to the collapse earlier this year of Northern Irelandโs devolved government should have been triggered by a โgreen energyโ scheme overseen by the Democratic Unionistย Party.
The devolved government involved an uneasy partnership between nationalist and unionist parties, including the DUP and its bitter rival, Sinn Fรฉin. It collapsed last March when Sinn Fรฉin leader, the late Martin McGuinness, called for DUP leader, Arlene Foster, to resign over her role in the cash-for-ashย affair.
The so-called cash-for-ash controversy involved a botched government renewable heat incentive scheme, introduced in November 2012, and run by the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investmentย .
DUP leaderย Arlene Fosterย was the responsible minister at the time. The non-domestic element of the scheme was designed to encourage firms, businesses and farmers to switch from fossil fuel heating to biomass systems such as wood-burningย boilers.
However, its ham-fisted implementation and complete absence of cost controls created perverse incentives whereby for every ยฃ1 a business spent on fuel, it received a government subsidy of ยฃ1.60. This quickly escalated into a massive scam, where furnaces were burning fuel around the clock in sheds with the windows and doors wideย open.
The final cost to the taxpayer for this fiasco is expected to be upwards of ยฃ400ย million.
DUP leader Arlene Fosterโs reported behaviour towards her party colleague, Jonathan Bell, when he tried to shut the scheme down may be instructive on how she approaches talks with Theresa May. โShe was hostile and abusiveโฆshe walked in and shouted at me that I would keep this scheme open,โ claimed Bell. Foster subsequently survived a no-confidenceย vote.
As the shockingly old-fashioned stances of Theresa Mayโs new partners in government on a range of scientific, social and political issues illustrate, there is more than a grain of truth in the old joke about the captain on a flight about to land in Northern Ireland announcing to passengers: โLadies and gentlemen, we will shortly be touching down in Belfast. Please put your watches back 300ย yearsโ.
John Gibbons is a Dublin-based specialist writer and commentator on climate and environmental issues. He blogs atย ThinkOrSwim.ieย You canย follow him on Twitter here.
Photo: DUP Photos via Flickr | CCย 2.0
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