Opinion

Brian Feeney: Chances of Stormont coming back in next ten months are close to zero

Brian Feeney

Brian Feeney

Historian and political commentator Brian Feeney has been a columnist with The Irish News for three decades. He is a former SDLP councillor in Belfast and co-author of the award-winning book Lost Lives

Ian Knox cartoon 1/8/18: Strategists start a chess game while tribal screamers scream 
Ian Knox cartoon 1/8/18: Strategists start a chess game while tribal screamers scream  Ian Knox cartoon 1/8/18: Strategists start a chess game while tribal screamers scream 

The silly season for news began formally this week. Dáil and Westminster parliament closed for the summer and politicians off on holiday, though not before Varadkar and May did a quick tour of a few European capitals.

In Varadkar’s case to persuade eastern European leaders to hold fast on the Irish backstop, in May’s case to advance the traditional British manoeuvre on mainland Europe, to break ranks and let Britain divide and rule.

Nothing will happen until September when optimists here believe there will begin a slow return to talks about restoring devolution. That won’t happen either. First, the RHI inquiry resumes in September with testimony from former DUP minister Jonathan Bell likely to contradict both Arlene Foster and her DUP special advisers. Then Foster herself returns to give evidence, her facade of competence as a minister already badly cracked by her previous testimony with suggestions she ran a ‘dysfunctional department’, didn’t read crucial documents, didn’t know material facts and couldn’t run a school tuck shop. How could credible talks begin with all that simmering?

More to the point who would chair talks? Certainly not our proconsul, Theresa May’s DUP takeaway delivery driver. Sucking up to the DUP on a daily basis, catering for their every whim is hardly a position to commend itself to Sinn Féin at a negotiating table, apart from the simple fact that she has no experience whatsoever in chairing negotiations of the kind required here. Besides, throughout October Theresa May, if she survives that long, will be dependent on DUP votes in Westminster in a series of crucial divisions about the Withdrawal Treaty – if there is one. How could the delivery driver possibly pretend she’s even handed?

The more fundamental problem is, what is there to talk about? There was a deal in February which Foster couldn’t deliver even though it wasn’t a good deal for Sinn Féin who had watered down their demands on Acht na Gaelige, assembly procedures and the petition of concern to homeopathic levels. Sinn Féin can’t with any credibility give away any more, yet the DUP is unable to give them what little they gained. So there’s no one credible to chair any talks until after Brexit next March and nothing of substance to talk about then. That’s deadlock.

In the meantime, to confirm her obligation to please the DUP our proconsul at their behest refuses to cut MLAs’ salaries or take any action which could circumvent the blockage the DUP has placed on same-sex marriage and abortion reform and thereby smooth a return to an executive. She’s just treading water until next March. Even then, if there’s not a British walkout in the autumn or next January, talks with the EU on a new trading relationship will begin during which the DUP will still be necessary to support what passes for a government at Westminster. Do you think the Conservatives will have stopped taking lumps out of each other by then? Of course not.

In short the chances of devolution being up and running in the next ten months are close to zero or below. The regular goodies May’s delivery driver brings to the DUP to keep this dreadful British government afloat have poisoned the concept of devolution. The bias is so blatant that it would continue unabated if there were devolution: legacy matters being the most glaring example. What’s the point in being in an executive when DUP ministers can sneak off to the proconsul for a new takeaway if they fancy another feed?

In this context the most irritating element is the constant refrain of the Irish government that the DUP and Sinn Féin are equally to blame when it is perfectly obvious from the anaemic deal Sinn Féin agreed in February that it is they who wanted back into an executive and the DUP who didn’t. It’s doubly irritating when the one-sided behaviour of the British government is obvious to all.

The net result is growing alienation among nationalists about the concept of devolution exacerbated by the duplicity of the British government about the backstop May signed up to last December and confirmed in March. Add to that the removal of EU rights from northerners produces a dangerous mix.