Are the DUP running Gregory Campbell up the flagpole and seeing how many people salute? In recent weeks the East Derry MP has been boldly going to places where no DUP man has gone before. At the start of this month he appeared in west Belfast at Feile an Phobail, last weekend he was in the Bogside at a Derry City game. The body language message is clear: the DUP wants to establish contact with republicans.
The verbal language, of course – the official line – is very different. In the early 1960s Ian Paisley was roaring from any soapbox he could find that O'Neill Must Go. Last week Gregory was declaring with equal conviction that the Agreement Must Go, and using a vintage Big Ian metaphor to explain why: 'Because the foundation upon which it is constructed is neither sound nor sure'. The DUP solution? Knock down this agreement house and through negotiations, build a new agreement, preferably excluding Sinn Féin.
Oh dear. It's the old failure-to-listen problem again. Both the SDLP and Sinn Féin have said, over and over, that there are going to be no negotiations – NO NEGOTIATIONS – about producing a new agreement. Anti-agreement unionists may tell themselves that republicans/nationalists have been taking everything and giving nothing but the reality is a bit different. Allowing less than one million unionists to decide the political structures for over four million nationalists on this island is, believe me Gregory, as good as it gets. Next time you're at the Brandywell, stop off at Martin McGuinness's house on the way home and he'll explain the detail.
Or head up to the Rosemount and visit John Hume. You'll probably find him at home. After an extended period of low visibility, the former SDLP leader last week went high-profile again – writing in the Boston Globe, appearing on TV. You can tell there's a European election coming up.
The ideas John was articulating in the newspapers and on television have been worn smooth with repetition down the decades. Respect for diversity, spilling sweat rather than blood, peace not conflict, Europe has set aside past enmities so why can't we? But one new note was sounded. Normally John emphasises the need for an acceptance of differing viewpoints, an understanding of unionist fears.
Last weekend a tougher tone emerged. Rather than comfort, Mr Hume had a warning for unionists. If they insist on bringing down the Good Friday Agreement, he says, they will bring down with it the principle of consent. In a post-agreement period, the lock which unionists have been given on constitutional change will be removed. The British and Irish governments will be in charge and they will be free to create what new relationships they think best between these two islands – including constitutional change.
Other than an upcoming election, there are at least two reasons why the former SDLP leader has delivered this blunt warning. One relates to the Rev Martin Smyth's jibe that the SDLP has begun to resemble the Incredible Hulk, it's got so green. Not quite. But the severe electoral pressure coming from Sinn Féin has forced the SDLP to paddle like mad and put some deep green water between it and John Hume's post-nationalism of a few years back. Mr Hume's warning at the weekend follows that new, greener line.
The second reason for the SDLP man's warning is that he is nothing if not a politician. There are those who see John Hume as St John, a man suffused with goodness, shining Ghandi-like in the gloom of local politics. Hah. You don't get to supplant Gerry Fitt, drag a kicking-and-screaming party the way you want, and survive a brutal assault from the southern media, by being a saint. You do these things by being the cleverest SDLP politician there has been or probably ever will be. A few years ago, during a conversation with one of John's senior colleagues, I made a naive remark about the need for politicians to do the right thing. "Politics is about using power to get what you want," the SDLP man said, looking at me with something close to pity. "The rest is window-dressing." John Hume knows that.
If Gregory Campbell had been listening in 1998, if the DUP had been listening, they would have heard the sinews of nationalists/republicans groan to cracking point as they handed unionists the principle of consent.
If, instead of accepting and guarding this precious gift, the DUP now insist on winding its mechanism tighter and tighter until the main-spring goes, they'll have proved themselves the most inept politicians in the history of unionism. And then 100 Gregory Campbell guest appearances won't save them.
