Things have changed and changed utterly at Stormont. The creation of an official opposition in the north marks a fundamental step in our political process. Over the next five years the SDLP is determined to ensure that it becomes widely recognised as a positive step forward. That won’t happen automatically. It will require us to provide sustained scrutiny of government whilst also providing a progressive and positive alternative to it.
There is nothing corrosive about that kind of opposition, in fact I believe it will prove itself to be both creative and constructive. Opposition will finally provide our electoral landscape with the healthy offer of a binary choice.
The change of opposition will also bring with it a broader opportunity. One of the major deficits since the formation of our institutions has been the failure to embed solid policy formation into the life of our politics. We should all be humble enough to admit that no political party has been fully free or exempt from that failure.
Coverage and content in the assembly has therefore largely focused on old battles rather than new ideas. As a result ongoing crises in our health service, in homelessness, in child poverty, in regional economic equality and in higher education have been left largely unmet. No longer can the assembly chamber be limited to being an echo chamber of rhetoric. This next Assembly mandate must finally see an end to that pattern, otherwise frustration will continue to foment.
The SDLP fully acknowledges that the DUP and Sinn Féin have been given a mandate to govern. The result of the election was clear. Having been unable to gain agreement with the two executive parties on a comprehensive and progressive programme for government, a new and refreshed SDLP team will now tirelessly hold this government to account and offer an alternative over the course of the next five years.
It is therefore particularly disappointing that only in the last week, through a mixture of arrogance and fear, the two party executive has attempted to shut down opportunities for accountability through the number of oppositional assembly debates.
It is also important to acknowledge the voices who have expressed worry and caution that an evolution of our political structures will interfere with architecture of our hard won political accommodation. It is my belief though that the Good Friday Agreement was always intended to be a living document, it was never meant to be a document frozen in time. The evolution of our political structures is not a step back. The formation of a new opposition, used properly, will be an entirely healthy evolution for our politics and its policy formation.
Our politics was crying out for such a change. Any analysis which continues to advocate the status quo of the last decade ultimately contains at its heart a nihilism as to what politics here can actually offer. Under my leadership the SDLP is not prepared to accept a future which languishes under a philosophy of steady as she goes. People are now demanding that we mature beyond the bare essentials of just peace and political stability. They are rightly demanding that our politics delivers more.
For a nationalist party in the north entering into opposition is obviously particularly difficult. Since partition, our community was long denied power here and therefore we have long been in opposition. That memory runs deep. But those were different days and this is a different Ireland.
Equality provisions and protections for both communities are now enshrined and guaranteed by international treaties and by two governments. Power-sharing between unionism and nationalism remains locked in. The days of sectarian majority rule are now gone and will never return.
The SDLP didn’t rush to judgement in deciding to enter into opposition. We understand it is a big and bold move. For the good of our politics though, we believe it to have been necessary and right. Change must no longer come dropping slow at Stormont.
