HEALTH minister Michelle O’Neill has been promoted to Sinn Féin’s ‘leader in the north’ - if it is a promotion to lead an executive your party may put out of business. The DUP greeted this news with a cartoon of O’Neill in Gerry Adams’s breast pocket, which was not misogyny because - as the caption correctly inferred - Martin McGuinness also followed orders. The fresh demonstration of Adams’s power was his shameless admission of selecting O’Neill personally then referring this to the party for “ratification”, which duly and mysteriously happened. None of this means O’Neill lacks political skill, however. In 2011, when she was agriculture minister, a controversy over a £100 million EU farm subsidy fine left her completely unscathed. Perhaps she can tell Arlene Foster how she did it, if they ever work together again.
**
Gerry Adams has moved a bill of rights up Sinn Féin’s list of talks demands, including it in a discussion with Taoiseach Enda Kenny on “saving the Good Friday Agreement”. If this is to become as important an issue as an Irish Language Act its previous advocates should be kept well away. The Human Rights Consortium was set up as an umbrella group to drive the last bill of rights campaign, while the Committee for the Administration of Justice was heavily involved in organising it. They over-reached themselves and killed the project stone dead. Both groups have just repeated this triumph with Brexit, bringing one of the cases thrown out by Belfast High Court and now thrown out again by the Supreme Court. Realistic goals, not hysterical grandstanding, will be the key to delivery.
**
As a result of the Supreme Court ruling, Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to proceed quickly with a Commons vote, meaning Article 50 could be triggered by mid-March instead of the end of March as initially planned. This will be slap-bang in the middle of Stormont’s three-week crisis talks window after the March 2 election.
**
The power to suspend Stormont was repealed in 2006 as part of the St Andrew’s Agreement. Since then it has been widely assumed that restoring it would only take an order in council - in effect, the stroke of a pen. But that is most definitely not the view at the Northern Ireland Office, where suspension powers would reside. A UK government source has assured me that primary legislation would be required, meaning any kind of pause in devolution would take weeks or even months to arrange. As this would undermine any talks to reform the executive, which will also take weeks or months at best, it would make more sense to let Stormont stew while the civil service goes onto autopilot and emergency budget procedures kick in. If that all adds to the pressure for a deal, so much the better.
**
A Belfast judge has issued an interim injunction preventing 300 RHI boiler operators from being named by the Department of the Economy, after hearing they fear a “media feeding frenzy”. There is no law against media feeding frenzies, while EU law requires the details of all state aid recipients to be published online and this was specified in the RHI contract. Yet somehow that can all be set aside. Even more remarkably, the 300 operators - who have formed a group called the Renewable Heat Association of Northern Ireland - have previously said they will take the department to court for breach of contract if it attempts to cut their subsidies. Is that not having their cake and heating it?
**
Before Christmas, while promoting his book on a united Ireland, Labour blogger and former NIO adviser Kevin Meagher predicted that English city deals would help unravel the union as powerful mayors eyed up the funding for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. One month later the first sign of this has appeared, with Labour’s candidate in the new West Midlands city region invoking English nationalism. Sion Simons was a minister under Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, is still an MEP and had been considered a moderate. But now he is campaigning under the flag of St George, wants to be “a voice for English patriotism, on the side of the English” and is calling for an end to the Barnett formula, which sets devolved budgets, because “the English regions deserve a better deal.” In a classic English response, the Birmingham Mail has branded it all “a bit desperate”.
**
The Electoral Office removed around 60,000 names from the electoral register on December 1 last year, due to unreturned forms from the last household canvass in 2013. People were given three years and further reminders to reply before it was assumed they had moved or did not wish to be included. The final update was performed before this March’s election could be foreseen and two years before the next scheduled poll of any kind. Yet a Sinn Féin statement, issued in the name of MP and former Stormont deputy speaker Francie Molloy, has denounced it as “British government political interference and discrimination in the upcoming assembly election.” Can Sinn Féin substantiate this extraordinary allegation, or is it just paranoid nonsense?
newton@irishnews.com
