Opinion

Tom Kelly: Successful talks need independent arbitrator

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

The DUP's ten MPs are propping up Theresa May's Conservative government
The DUP's ten MPs are propping up Theresa May's Conservative government The DUP's ten MPs are propping up Theresa May's Conservative government

The New Year has only started and yet there is more than a touch of vinegar in the exchanges between Sinn Féin and the DUP. Their comments seem more barbed and more entrenched than before.

But there is no escaping the fact that the current impasse lies firmly and squarely at their respective doors in east and west Belfast and that of Number 10.

The DUP boast about their £1billon bonanza from the beleaguered Tory government sits uneasily with a proposal for swingeing cuts across Northern Ireland’s public services.

In the absence of devolution and a multi-party executive, if those cuts go ahead then it is the DUP which will be the focus of public anger locally.

They can’t claim to have a cosy relationship with the Tory administration and hype their importance on key votes in Westminster and at the same time escape responsibility for the cuts that will be imposed in Northern Ireland.

And let’s face it whilst the (as of today former) secretary of state may not have been calling it direct rule what we have right now is effectively direct rule with civil servants in Stormont dovetailing with their counterparts in Whitehall and with Brokenshire and his team acting like plantation overseers.

The DUP bonanza is needed in Northern Ireland right now.

The block grant has been reduced year on year. Blair, Brown and Cameron have all previously hoodwinked Northern Ireland voters with promises of lavish spending, only for it never to materialise.

The promise of jam tomorrow from a prime minister who is barely clinging to office is of little consequence or comfort to those who are jamming up our hospital accident and emergency departments. The sad reality is that people are now impatient for treatment and some have lost the ability to distinguish between an actual emergency and a sense of an immediate entitlement to primary care even if through an A&E department.

That said, despite the ongoing political point scoring and the constant hyping up of an Armageddon in the health service in some sections of the media, Belfast is not Bangalore.

And it is also clear that all the local political parties already agreed to health care reform in Northern Ireland (on paper) in 2016 but they lacked the backbone to deliver on it when it comes to service provision in their own backyards.

Yet if there were a New Year award for sheer chutzpah it would have to go to the Sinn Féin spokesperson on everything - the earnest and loquacious John O’Dowd.

O’Dowd told the BBC last week that the DUP could use their mandate at Westminster to bring down this iniquitous Tory government and give us the chance to have an alternative government led by Jeremy Corbyn. That Sinn Féin, in a heart beat, could increase the likelihood of this fragile Brexit government collapsing by merely showing up and voting at key votes on the EU at Westminster seemed lost on the normally logical O’Dowd.

That there also have been no fewer than eleven by-elections in Britain since May 2015 shows just how precarious the situation is for Mrs May’s future.

God and circumstances may dictate her political longevity more than any support from the DUP. As ever with Sinn Féin’s ducking and diving leadership it leaves it to others to do the heavy lifting. Once it was Hume and the SDLP on the Good Friday Agreement and these days it’s Varadkar and the Irish government on Brexit.

But even by Sinn Féin standards to expect the DUP to bring down a Tory government at its bidding would amaze the legendary showman PT Barnum.

We are told that there is to be a renewed attempt to start the talks by going to an up-market venue in Britain.

This is a waste of time unless there is an independent chairperson and actual transparency on what is finally agreed and with whom.

Any such talks process also needs a deadline determined by the chairperson. Prolonged talks undermine the credibility of the politicians themselves. The former secretary of state had no credibility as an arbitrator between the sides here in Northern Ireland. The Tory-DUP confidence and supply agreement blew that right out of the water.

Unionist whinges about the increasingly prominent role of the taoiseach on all island and Anglo-Irish affairs are as meaningful as Canute trying to roll back the tide. If some unionists are not careful they may be carried out by a tide of hubris.