DUP Manifesto Analysis
The Democratic Unionist party (DUP) is a right wing Conservative party with strong Christian convictions. The views of the party focus primarily on lowering cooperation with the European Union, increasing trade within the UK and lowering VAT. The DUP currently sits at around 30% right on the Beyond NI left-right scale, it must be noted that this percentage is worked out from manifesto points not voting records.
While it is common knowledge that the DUP is a traditional Christian party focused on keeping Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, other factors of its policy outlook are not as widely known.
The economic position of the DUP is a mixed bag of left and right responses. In some regards economically the DUP have multiple centre left economic policies, such as raising the national living wage, gradual tax increase for higher earners, maintaining universal benefits such as free public transport for over 60s, retaining the winter fuel allowance and raising universal benefits in line with inflation. However this is then paired with multiple policy responses aimed at lowering tax, such as abolishing Air traffic tax, lowering hospitality tax and lowering corporation tax. This slight right wing economics theme is topped off by their rejection of the European Union and having a desire to participate in free market trading with the rest of the world.
In terms of social policy the DUP is unsurprisingly one based completely on right wing ideology. It firmly believes in maintaining the traditional Christian views of marriage, firmly rejecting gay marriage and abortion legislation in Northern Ireland. In terms of international outlook the DUP is based on euroscepticism, increasing defence funding at a national UK level and maintaining the NATO defence block contribution of 2% GDP. This is further backed with proposals for increased military spending and ensuring that the Trident nuclear weapon system is maintained.
The DUP is also in favour of immigration reform, even though it does not specifically say what its aims are for immigration numbers. It does state that it wants to change the shift from EU workers too commonwealth area workers (Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc).
