The former DUP director of policy Lee Reynolds talks about the future of unionism at an event organised by Together UK at Queen's University in Belfast. Professor Peter Shirlow also spoke. Video by Ben Lowry, editor of the Belfast News Letter. November 29 2024
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00:00to go over there and not to go over there.
00:02So we then side to side that sitting here and doing nothing
00:04is a good idea.
00:06Stats quo is not our friend.
00:08We have things that we need to change.
00:09We need to get on with changing it.
00:12And let's look and repeat and look back over history.
00:14What unionism has tended to do is go, well,
00:16there's the stats quo.
00:17We'll just have to try and defend it.
00:18How's that worked out first?
00:21So why would we persist with it?
00:22Your opponents tell you who they are.
00:31Before the election, Merrily Macdonald
00:33went down to court to look at McSwinney's
00:35and the court of mayor who was a pumper spout and all
00:39the rest of it.
00:40And his great line is that it's about who endures the most.
00:43And that's their mindset.
00:45What we have tended to have in unionism
00:47is spasms.
00:48We do a sprint.
00:51In a sprint race, we're in an Ironman challenge.
00:55We've endured to the length of who can, I think,
00:58outwork and outlast us.
00:59And that's the mindset we have to get into.
01:04This is the biggest challenge.
01:07Get the provost out of our heads.
01:10Terrorism, at its core, is psychological warfare.
01:15What they really do is get inside your head.
01:19Terrorist organizations are never
01:21going to be capable of killing the entire population
01:23of an area.
01:23They'll have lots of people wandering around
01:25before they do.
01:26They're very good at getting in your head.
01:29But if you allow them into your opponents' in your head,
01:32they've got the advantage.
01:33Anything you then develop will be a counter-strategy.
01:36We don't need a counter-strategy.
01:37We need a strategy.
01:39That's what we need to be developing.
01:43And it will be a challenge.
01:44And it's not easy.
01:45But it can end easily.
01:48You used the quote from Philip Hickey.
01:52The republicans are very good at the dead cat.
01:54Throwing them the dead cat.
01:55It's not the destructionism over here.
01:57It's the destructionism over there.
01:59It's all counter-strategy.
02:01And we need to step away from it and get away from it.