All is not well in the DUP. The once-mighty masters of Northern Irish politics last night convened a top-secret executive meeting to discuss a return to power-sharing at Stormont. But the event was spectacularly upstaged by a succession of leaks to loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, who proceeded to live-tweet the meeting. Somewhat embarrassingly, these updates also included details of apparent attempts to find out who was leaking the information to Bryson, a vocal opponent of Stormont’s return. Needless to say, such attempts were unsuccessful…
In an epic 44-long tweet threat, Bryson set out leader Jeffrey Donaldson’s remarks to his party. Among them include complaints of leaks, with every meeting getting ‘in the hands of the media in less than an hour.’ Shortly thereafter, the meeting itself was halted after, er, attendees realised it was being live-tweeted. ‘Mayhem’ ensued in Bryson’s words, with one DUP delegate accusing the attendant PSNI officers of being behind the leak. The meeting subsequently resumed before the party chairman ordered ‘PHONES OFF’. Donaldson declared that the police were trying to block the phone signal but that it had not stopped the reporting from the meeting.
Amid talk of efforts to reduce Brexit-related regulation, the PSNI were ‘still being consulted by senior DUP HQ staff’ according to Bryson with officers ‘trying to use technology to sweep the room.’ A Powerpoint presentation was then shown, with the party chair sporadically shouting ‘PHONES OFF’. But, according to Bryson, ‘someone reminds him some need to keep them on to monitor my Twitter. Presumably for those at the back who can’t hear.’ ‘Furious-looking’ party members watched as Donaldson spoke about trade from the mainland before finally the meeting wrapped up after contributions from the floor. As Bryson concluded ‘At this stage, I almost feel like I should make a contribution.’
So, to summarise: the ‘secret’ DUP meeting had its time and location leaked, an army of waiting media and protesters outside and the internal contents of the meeting live-tweeted while the police were first accused of leaking, then asked to block phone signals before sweeping the room for bugs. As columnist Alex Kane wrote:
I never thought the moment would come. But the DUP at tonight’s meeting is making the UUP under David Trimble look like a model of harmony, unity, control and sanity.
How ironic that the DUP was worried about protestors and disrupters outside the meeting – when, all along, the threat was inside it after all.
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