The case for restoring devolution now depends not just on an Irish language act but on reforming the petition of concern.
If Stormont is to receive the package of regulatory powers proposed in last week’s Brussels deal, it will have a key role in determining where Northern Ireland sits on the trading spectrum between the UK and the EU, working out sector by sector arrangements to find the magical but just about possible spot between imperceptible land and sea borders.
This would inevitably become a unionist versus nationalist tussle but the mathematics of the last assembly election and most foreseeable future elections should ensure compromise. Alliance holds the balance of power and believes regulatory alignment is a good, workable approach to Brexit.
However, the petition of concern gives unionism and nationalism a veto and DUP MP Sammy Wilson has already said his party should use it to block any significant divergence from the UK. From a nationalist perspective, that renders Stormont purely an obstruction.
Fortunately, reform of the petition of concern was agreed at Fresh Start in November 2015, along with a new protocol for its use and a commitment to refer it to the assembly “within a month”.
Unfortunately, that never happened and nothing has been heard of it since.
The disappearance of this commitment from our political debate is the great abiding puzzle of the past two years.
There was no mention of it throughout 2016, when the mathematics of the assembly allowed the DUP to raise a petition on its own, giving republicans strong and straightforward grounds for complaint. Odder still, after devolution collapsed, Sinn Féin mined every negotiating disappointment it had suffered since the Good Friday Agreement to produce a list of allegedly unmet commitments. Yet reform of the petition of concern, the clearest and most recent example of an unmet commitment, is not among them.
This is doubly bizarre when reform would address the critical items on Sinn Féin’s list - an Irish language act and same-sex marriage. Both would pass in the assembly without DUP support, thanks to the Greens and Alliance.
The protocol agreed in November 2015 is far from perfect, relying on “good faith” and “the spirit intended” while leaving the petition’s basic mechanism untouched. In fact, the protocol seems mainly concerned with stopping private member’s motions - that is, proposals by non-executive parties - from sneaking past Sinn Féin and the DUP.
More substantive change would in many respects be the greatest reform ever attempted of the Good Friday institutions, as it would herald a de facto majoritarian assembly, albeit with executive power sharing still intact. By contrast, all that was achieved at St Andrew’s was a tighter two-party stitch-up of the executive via the Office of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister.
A better protocol needs to be agreed, narrowing use of the petition down to a backstop against sectarian outrages.
The DUP presumably sank the 2015 deal for obvious selfish reasons but Sinn Féin’s acquiescence is a deepening mystery.
The petition of concern was introduced to protect nationalists from a unionist majority. Now that both blocs are minorities, with centrist parties granting nationalism a so-called progressive majority, the petition acts purely as a veto against change, favouring unionism by default.
With avoiding a hard Brexit also suddenly at stake, why are republicans not insisting on reform?
It has difficult to avoid the conclusion that a two-party stitch-up is all Sinn Féin really wants - a return to the status quo, only with its own status slightly enhanced and the DUP’s slightly chastened.
Reform of the petition of concern would make Stormont a lot more like Belfast City Council, where measures such as Irish language recognition sail through the chamber but Alliance gets some of the credit and forces republicans and unionists to compromise, while denying them the joys of direct horse-trading.
A policy like Stormont’s social investment fund, with its £40 million for loyalist communities and matching £40 million for republican communities, is how Sinn Féin and the DUP prefer to do business.
When both parties tried something similar at Belfast City Council this year over a £4 million community fund, Alliance intervened and referred it to the Northern Ireland Audit Office.
Unlocking the assembly’s progressive majority would benefit nationalism in every conceivable way, yet it appears that unstitching the stitch-up is too high a price for Sinn Féin.
If the party has a better explanation for its silence on the petition of concern, let’s hear it.
newton@irishnews.com