Opinion

Bryson story overshadows the real problems at Stormont

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

Jamie Bryson leaves Stormont after giving evidence to the Stormont finance committee's Nama inquiry in September last year. Picture by Mal McCann
Jamie Bryson leaves Stormont after giving evidence to the Stormont finance committee's Nama inquiry in September last year. Picture by Mal McCann Jamie Bryson leaves Stormont after giving evidence to the Stormont finance committee's Nama inquiry in September last year. Picture by Mal McCann

THE real significance of the short-lived romance between Sinn Féin and Jamie Bryson is its contribution to our understanding of government and politics here. While the events revealed in this newspaper are of huge public importance, they are also another indication of the culture of politics and the cult of power, which emerged from our great sectarian war.

The shock-horror reaction to the story is understandable at one level, but it was hardly surprising to have it confirmed that sectarian rivalry between SF and the DUP is the glue which holds Stormont together.

Few can now disagree that Sinn Féin and the DUP need each other to remain in government, but they also need to continually discredit each other as part of the electoral politics which guarantees their entry into government. Their relationship might best be described in terms of physics rather than politics.

Think of the two parties as magnets. In government they are attracted to each other by the opportunity for power. However, if one magnet is turned around, the same two objects repel each other. That describes their political interaction. Thus the relationship between SF and the DUP depends on how one or both of them decides to align the magnets.

So how does the two-magnets theory explain what we might call Brysongate and what outcome can we expect from it all?

The Bryson episode was little more than political blood sport. Sinn Féin was trying to hunt down what they saw as an increasingly isolated member of the DUP, for the apparent edification of its nationalist electorate. But this was no ordinary hunt. It was driven by what happened in the Dáil - and what did not happen in Stormont.

Southern Sinn Féin had made good mileage in criticising the Dublin government for Nama's role in taking banks' bad debts and subsequently disposing of the associated properties, including those in the north.

But northern Sinn Féin remained relatively silent on the sale of Nama's northern properties, which suggests that the magnets were in government mode.

We have no idea how much northern SF knew about the deal, but when Mick Wallace TD broke the story of alleged payments to some of those advising on it, southern SF had to transform Nama into an issue of political confrontation in the north. Northern SF therefore reversed the magnets, with help from Jamie Bryson.

So Brysongate was merely another episode in a phoney war, a point recognised by the DUP, as evidenced by Arlene Foster's reluctance to make an issue of it. Only for Martín Ó Muilleoir's name being mentioned in the leaked information, the story would now be dead.

Supporters of the Stormont system (and there are not nearly as many as there used to be) would argue that the phoney war is a sign of political maturity. (Isn't it an odd society in which the morally disturbing is welcomed as politically stabilising?)

Others would see it more as a giant scam, in which sectarian politics are cynically used by both sides. They have a point, but the relevance of Brysongate is not confined to unethical political behaviour.

It illustrates two more important issues. The first is that it deflects attention from the real issues of Nama. We still have no idea who, if anyone, stood to benefit from the £7 million and no matter how much we investigate the Bryson-Sinn Féin links, it will never answer that question. The Bryson tale, important though it is, diverts us from the real story.

For example, it is still not clear what input, if any, SF and the DUP had in the appointment of Nama's Northern Advisory Committee members and what knowledge the two parties had of the work of that committee. If they had no knowledge, did they ask?

The second issue is that sectarian sham fights tend to dilute public demand for government accountability. Titillation diverts us from truth. The truth, for example, is that in the aftermath of Brexit, we have effectively no Programme for Government. But why worry - Jamie Bryson is in the news.

As a new academic year begins, we have no idea how schools and universities will be funded. But never mind - look at what Jamie Bryson said.

Stores like Jamie Bryson should be a minor side-show at Stormont. But as long as politics here is driven by sectarianism at the switch of a magnet, such stories will top the bill above the social and economic issues facing our people.

That is the real news about Sinn Féin and Jamie Bryson and the real tragedy of what passes for politics here.