Life

Mary Kelly: The Irish Sea border isn't as big a threat to the Union as unionist politicians themselves

Jeffrey will be crowned officially today. He just needs to practice not looking quite so smug. He’s starting on a high note - in his acceptance speech he suggested stable government here was “not realistic” while every unionist opposed the NI Protocol

Jeffrey Donaldson, due to officially become DUP leader today, has suggested that stable government is "not realistic" while every unionist remains opposed to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire
Jeffrey Donaldson, due to officially become DUP leader today, has suggested that stable government is "not realistic" while every unionist remains opposed to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire Jeffrey Donaldson, due to officially become DUP leader today, has suggested that stable government is "not realistic" while every unionist remains opposed to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire

"A different kind of politics now," said Tom Bradby as he announced news of Jeffrey Donaldson's tilt at the DUP leadership to ITN viewers on Monday night.

How true. It's only here that a former DUP special adviser could complain on Radio 4's Today programme that Sinn Féin were trying to "fast-track" legislation on the Irish language.

Fast-track? something that was agreed 15 years ago at St Andrews?

Just how different our politics is was laid bare by a Guardian study to mark NI's 100th birthday. Parliament was prorogued in 1972 after proving itself incapable of governance. It was reconstituted as a power-sharing administration after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and since then has lurched from crisis to crisis with five suspensions - the most recent of which lasted three years.

The newspaper's analysis of 871 motions and amendments debated since 2000 found that 51 per cent received zero cross-community support. Tribal politics means nationalist and unionist representatives herd into green and orange blocks.

Of the 871 votes, 442 received no support at all from one or other community - either no nationalist MLA voted in favour or no unionist voted in favour.

Just 32 per cent passed with at least one or more votes from an assembly member from the opposite designation.

And that's before we look at Petitions of Concern. What was intended as a little-used backstop has been tabled 152 times.

Not surprising, you might argue, for a coalition of the largely unwilling. But increasingly people are losing faith in the ability of the politicians they elect to govern properly.

Thus you have the cash for ash debacle, overseen by a timid civil service anxious not to offend the two leading parties by keeping proper minutes of meetings.

Thus we have a health service where people are dying on waiting lists.

And while the vaccine programme has been a total credit to those responsible, the Sinn Féin-led Department for Communities has handed out lavish 'hardship' Covid payments to ritzy golf clubs while the scrutinising committee appeared oblivious to what was going on.

Perhaps Sinn Féin didn't want typecast as the defenders of the poor and homeless, so they decided to help out the well-heeled as well?

A week is a long time in politics. Just ask Edwin Poots, who I imagine was not keen to hold the record for shortest ever leadership of the DUP.

Jeffrey will be crowned officially today. And it's unlikely he'll suffer the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as either Arlene or Pootsy. He just needs to practice not looking quite so smug.

He's starting on a high note - in his acceptance speech he suggested stable government here was "not realistic" while every unionist opposed the NI Protocol.

Poots is already claiming Brandon 'Swiss Toni' Lewis promised him "major changes" to the protocol, so that Jeffrey won't be able to claim them as his victory.

But the Irish Sea border isn't as big a threat to the Union as unionist politicians themselves.

They've had 100 years to make their beloved Norn Iron a decent place to live, but failed. It's a bit like Aesop's fable about the North Wind and the Sun disputing who was strongest by fighting to strip a traveller of his cloak.

The Wind blew hard and strong and the man gripped his cloak tighter. The Sun beamed its warm and pleasant rays on him and the man removed his cloak.

Fifty years of discrimination in housing and jobs, gerrymandering electoral boundaries and treating their nationalist citizens as fifth columnists out to sabotage their state didn't work. But they never put their hearts and minds into the alternative.

They couldn't work at making this a society that we could all have a stake in. One where it wasn't 'us and them'. All the fuss about allowing watered-down language rights that are substantially weaker than those in the rest of Britain shows it is still not possible.

Their cunning plan seems to be to kill what remains of the language provisions with a series of amendments when it reaches the floor of the Assembly.

This is why it's hard to feel celebratory about the centenary. Just ask the 150 people who complained to SDLP MLA Pat Catney about the unwanted flags placed without anyone's say-so at the road into their Lisburn homes.

They will stay there because the PSNI has advised the Department for Infrastructure that removing them would inflame tensions in the area. Who wants another 100 years of this?