Opinion

People deserve better than the current political farce

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

But we will come back to this point again. It may be called coalition, or partnership, or community government—but, whatever the name, Ulster people will realise that unless Protestants and Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, can find a way of working together in government for the good of the Province there will be no political stability, no economic progress, and no end to violence. The only real alternative to working together is to live separately. That means repartition and a form of sectarian apartheid which will bring shame on the name of Ireland. Being an optimist and a firm believer in the basic common sense of Ulster people I am convinced that co-operation will win through. In the power-sharing Executive we showed the way and others will follow.''

That was Brian Faulkner, writing about the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive in May 1974. Well, he was right, others did follow: albeit that each new attempt seems to end in the same sort of failure. People will say that it’s still too early to write off the Good Friday/St Andrews agreements, yet I see little evidence of a plan, let alone a collective determination, to address the flaws and float the project again.

Regular readers will know that none of this has come as any surprise to me. And it’s got nothing to with my natural, incurable pessimism, either. The root problems with the original agreement—and they were carried over into the DUP/Sinn Fein agreement in May 2007—remain the same: lack of trust, lack of civility and lack of common purpose.

People keep telling me that parties in a coalition don’t have to trust or like each other, yet ignore the reality that coalition parties need to be able to trust each other to the extent of accepting that they will all honour the terms and conditions of the Programme for Government (PfG) they have agreed, as well as buying into the doctrine of collective responsibility and accountability when it comes to legislating for and delivering that PfG. That clearly isn’t the case with our Executive partners, who regularly ignore, undermine and rubbish each other’s ministers, as well as launching judicial reviews against their decisions.

Which brings us to the issue of the lack of common purpose. The unionist and nationalist parties don’t agree on the purpose and future of the peace/political process. They want different, mutually contradictory outcomes from it and gear their strategies and policies towards those outcomes. In other words, Sinn Fein has no electoral interest in selling Northern Ireland as a stable, progressive, successful entity: while the DUP has no interest in promoting a cosy, consensual relationship with Sinn Fein. Loggerheads suits them both very well, thank you very much. And it works even better if around half the electorate opt out, particularly if the vast majority of those who do vote continue to vote for the same old us-and-them parties.

So there’s your problem: if you don’t have that basic trust and civility at the heart of your government and no sense of common purpose then crisis will follow hard on the heels of crisis. Worse, because it’s very clear that the British and Irish governments don’t want hands-on responsibility for any of this you can bet your bottom dollar that the DUP and Sinn Fein will continue to play silly buggers with the whole process. Indeed, there are times when it looks as though their irresponsibility and incompatibility suits both governments: because, let’s not forget, it was those two governments who shafted Trimble and Mallon in 2003 and encouraged the DUP and Sinn Fein to conduct a sham marriage.

What happens next? Talks and more talks. Then more talks. And probably an election which will, in turn, lead to more talks. (By the way, I really should thank the parties for conspiring to keep me very, very busy for the next few months.) Anyway, what are the chances of something different emerging on the electoral front? Hmm. Basil McCrea—who keeps moaning about ‘unelected pundits’ (although he seems to have forgotten that he hasn’t been elected as an NI21 MLA) having no alternatives to offer—has his own moment, now. Is he ready to reveal the ‘strategy for change, the something new and something different’ he talked of two years ago? Let’s hope so, because his on-the-loop whinge about the media has grown pretty tiresome.

Brian Faulkner was convinced that ‘co-operation will win through.’ It’s forty-one years since he expressed that optimism, though, and while the place is clearly more peaceful it’s just as polarised. For all of my cynicism I hope he will be proved right. The ordinary people, who have put up with so much for so long, really do deserve something better than the present farce.