There is a pivotal scene in Ali Abbasi’s award-winning film, The Apprentice, where Donald Trump, played by Sebastian Stan, is schooled on how to become a ‘winner’ by his mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, who is portrayed brilliantly by Jeremy Strong. Three golden rules are laid out by Cohn, with the atmosphere growing increasingly sinister as each law of success is proclaimed by the dead-eyed master.
“The first rule is the simplest: attack, attack, attack. Rule two: admit nothing, deny everything. Rule three —this is the most important rule of all: no matter what happens, no matter what they say about you, no matter how beaten you are, you claim victory and never admit defeat.”
Roy Cohn’s rules came to mind while observing the recent behaviour of Jamie Bryson as he revelled in the chaos he’d stoked up around Drumcree and the Orange Order’s contentious desire to march through the Garvaghy Road, despite opposition from that community.
Having succeeded in resurrecting a long-buried and traumatic flashpoint of the Troubles, the diminutive demagogue has smirked and snarled his way through the past few weeks, claiming victory after victory.
Whether he is quipping arrogantly about wanting “nice tea and buns” from a private audience with the Northern Ireland Secretary of State at Hillsborough Castle, leaning into his villainy while goading opponents outside of the courts, or gloating on podcasts about getting the better of one of the most highly regarded legal minds in Ireland, Bryson has assumed the character of a man who attacks and wins (or, at least, tells you he wins), no matter what.
Loyalism’s King Pyrrhus
Is he actually winning, though?
In a recent appearance1 on the Free State podcast with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning, Bryson tellingly revealed his ignorance of King Pyrrhus and the concept of a Pyrrhic victory; that is, a triumph that is achieved with a such deleterious cost to the victor that it effectively precipitates defeat.
The truth is that, despite registering a few wins on legal technicalities, the socio-political reality suggests that Bryson and the Orange Order have lost. When all is tallied up, the outcomes associated with Bryson’s culture war ‘staging post’ — his own description of this whole transparently contrived episode2 — hardly scream success for unionism.
Survey the fallout.
The British government stepped in to bring an end to the chronic agitation over the Garvaghy Road and there will be no Orange Order march on that particular route.
It has deepened divisions within the largest unionist party and, indeed, within unionism itself, while simultaneously uniting the broader nationalist and republican community across Ireland, which is something that will have profound long-term electoral consequences.
Widespread international solidarity for the Garvaghy Road residents has served to highlight the classic intransigence of a revanchist rump and that is a source of ongoing embarrassment for liberal, forward-looking unionists. Ancient resentments have been stirred up and young unionists are at risk of being radicalised by the incendiary rhetoric of the rabble-rousers.
Drumcree stunt hits taxpayer
Beyond the trenches, wider society recognises that it is ultimately the taxpayer who has to foot the judicial bill for such stunts (£5.5 million as of October 20)3, which does not play well during a time when a wide array of public services are not meeting the needs of ordinary people.
Finally, the episode has destabilised institutions to the point of collapse, which, should it transpire, simply reinforces the long-held analysis that Northern Ireland does not ‘work’ as a polity and encourages the pursuit of alternatives, including, whisper it, Irish reunification.4
As an avowed anti-Good Friday Agreement unionist, a collapse of Stormont and the power-sharing institutions would represent success to Bryson, which is why he has pushed feverishly for Emma Little-Pengelly to resign from office (which she and the DUP leadership have ruled out)5, but it would not be a complete success.
He has made no secret of his desire to shred the agreement and all that flows from it entirely — that long-term motivation cannot be overlooked in any serious analysis. What is unclear is how he imagines that particular end is achieved and what happens afterwards.
Either way, for now, just like Mr Cohn, Trump and, indeed, the ill-fated Protestant Coalition which came before him, no matter how beaten he is, the cry remains: ‘We claim the victory, so we do!’6
Notes
- ‘Jamie Bryson vs Joe Brolly: A Free State Special’, Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning, Gold Hat Productions, (October 15, 2026) ↩︎
- Mr Bryson has self-published a book called ‘Culture War’, in which he argues that unionism is, once again, under siege and must, therefore, attack its opponents. One review by ‘Liam Redux’ described the book as “an overlong variation of the story that loyal Ulster is being betrayed by everyone and the Taigs are up to no good.” ↩︎
- ‘Cost of policing Drumcree dispute now at £5.5m’, Irish Examiner, (October 20, 2026) ↩︎
- ‘Drumcree proves that unification of Ireland is North’s best bet’, Justine McCarthy, Irish Times, (October 2, 2026) ↩︎
- ‘DUP leader tells party collapsing Stormont would likely strengthen SF’, RTÉ, (October 24, 2026) ↩︎
- After preventing a republican march through Belfast in 2013, a member of the Protestant Coalition declared: “It’s been a victory for the Protestant, unionist, loyalist community here in the centre of Belfast. Dissident republicans didn’t get parading through the middle of our city. They were re-routed. In the end they accepted defeat. We claim the victory, so we do, for the decent citizens of Belfast.” — Quoted from ‘Attacking police justified, says Protestant Coalition’, News Letter, (August 13, 2013, archived from original.) ↩︎
