Opinion

Talented McDevitt won't be kept down for long

SPOOKY, or what? In my last column I mentioned Enoch Powell's dictum that "all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." I was writing about Peter Robinson - who, by the way, I still expect to stand down fairly soon - yet, completely out of the blue, it is Conall McDevitt who again reminds me of that quote.

McDevitt and McDevitt alone seems to have taken the decision to resign. I'm not aware of any huge pressure building on him from either the SDLP or the media, let alone from 'people in the street.'

Yes, he clearly made mistakes but they didn't strike me as being of a nature or scale to merit resignation. A mea culpa through an article or interview - and let's not forget that he is a PR expert - would probably have sufficed.

It would have been embarrassing for him, of course, but it probably wouldn't have done him any harm to eat a huge slice of humble pie.

His biggest mistake, I think, was a sort of throwaway line in an interview with the BBC's Tara Mills on Tuesday: "If I answer that question directly people will attack me politically." I tweeted that line shortly afterwards and added my own 'hmm'.

That 'hmm' was my way of saying it was a clumsy, probably damaging response to a not particularly hostile question from Mills. It had been an opportunity to close down the matter: instead, he pushed the door wide open, leaving the perception (and there is nothing more dangerous in politics than perception) he was unwilling to be self-critical because it would leave him open to attack from others.

It was a moment of hubris combined with cowardice and, in the end, it crippled him.

Politics is a brutal business, but it's a business that McDevitt loves. He lives and breathes politics. It's in his blood. He's good at it. Good when he was one of the SDLP's backroom staff and good when he was co-opted as an MLA in January 2010. He was everywhere: speaking in debate after debate in the Assembly, regularly on radio and television, at seminars and on panels.

He had an opinion on everything, and a determination that everyone should hear that opinion. I once described him as a 'whac-a-mole, which keeps popping back up again no matter how hard you keep whacking it down with a rubber hammer.'

He has many enemies in politics, not least in his South Belfast constituency, where the faction-riven SDLP occasionally resembles the Borgias on a night out on the town. There are others, across the media and wider politics, who believe that there wasn't much substance behind the style.

As one MLA told me, "Conall is like Judy Garland. He gives a performance as soon as the fridge light comes on and he never knows when to stop. He seems to think that you'll just surrender if he keeps talking at you."

That said, he was probably the SDLP's biggest hitter and certainly the only one who, apart from the leader, could be described as a household name. He has huge talent and I don't think there's anyone - even his bitterest opponent - who would try and deny the fact that he is serious about reconciliation and a shared future. Mind you, had he beaten McDonnell to the leadership (and boy, given what's happened, I'm sure there are key figures now breathing a sigh of relief that he didn't) I don't really think it would have made much of a difference.

The SDLP, like the UUP, seems to be deep in a process of terminal decline: so deep, in fact, that there's probably no-one capable of dragging it upwards again.

Is there a way back for him? My gut instinct is no. What we have seen of McDevitt over the last few days is a man who didn't cope well when faced with personal and political crisis. He tried to charm and smile his way out of it, yet he proved incapable of producing the sort of grit that is necessary in a potential leader.

Indeed, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he decided just to throw in the towel when the usual tactics of talking and talking and talking didn't seem to be working. But there is one think we can say about McDevitt: he may be down now, but it won't