Opinion

Newton Emerson: The petition of concern needs to be abolished, the question is how?

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

The Stormont assembly collapsed in 2017
The Stormont assembly collapsed in 2017 The Stormont assembly collapsed in 2017

A consensus has emerged among centre parties and political observers that the key to restoring Stormont is reform or abolition of the petition of concern.

That would allow the DUP to be outvoted on issues where it is culturally incapable of budging, such as same-sex marriage or an Irish language act, while saving its political face.

But how to do it? The DUP and Sinn Féin both want to keep the petition effectively as is - they made that plain in the Fresh Start agreement and February’s failed draft deal. Any change would have to be imposed over their heads, by Westminster amending the law enacting the Good Friday and St Andrews agreements. Even without the DUP-Tory deal and the government’s fragile majority, it would be almost unprecedented for Westminster to tinker with Stormont against the wishes of both main Northern Ireland parties. It would also drive a coach and horses through basic UK conventions on devolution.

However, there is a precedent in the way St Andrews was finally forced through. When the DUP and Sinn Féin could not come to terms, mainly over recognition of policing and justice, the British and Irish governments published their own deal, along with deadlines for implementation and threats of “joint stewardship” to bounce the DUP along. Still, it took a further three years and another British-Irish agreement to bounce Sinn Féin into recognising the PSNI.

London and Dublin need to work together for imposed solutions to have cross-community legitimacy. The prospect of both governments rebuilding their relationship to that extent is years away, at best. People are starting to speak of a DUP cultural shift, driven by the problems mounting against it, as Stormont’s only hope. That has to be a fond hope. We have been here before in requiring cultural shifts from the DUP and Sinn Féin - on decommissioning, disbandment and devolution itself. They have always had to be dragged kicking and screaming under coordinated pressure from London, Dublin and even Washington.

If anything so drastic is to be considered at all, as ultimately appears inevitable, there is a better target than the petition of concern.

The St Andrews rule change on appointing the first and deputy first ministers lies at the heart of our deadlocked politics. What had been two separate electoral contests within each designation, walled off from each other to let voters choose between parties, was transformed into a cross-community race for the top spot.

This has removed all pressure at the ballot box for the DUP to change. Reform of the petition of concern might allow it to be outvoted in the assembly but it is now inconceivable it could ever be voted out as the executive’s largest unionist party. Coming within a whisker of Sinn Féin in the last Stormont election ensures unionists will keep flocking to the DUP for the foreseeable future.

Contrast this with the Good Friday Agreement rules, under which the SDLP outpolled the UUP without panicking unionists into shoring up the UUP.

Sinn Féin has occasionally proposed de-dramatising the top party contest by replacing the titles of first and deputy first minister with ‘joint first ministers’. The posts have always been equal and were only differentiated at unionist insistence.

This is a generous offer and a solution the Stormont parties could reach on their own but it would no longer be enough.

In its ‘one last push’ call for a second Stormont election last year, Sinn Féin was clear it would see surpassing the DUP as a watershed moment in triggering a border poll and advancing a united Ireland. While that is the party’s right, unionist voters are acting rationally when they prioritise preventing it over any and every other issue. The nationalist electorate is not acting any differently in flocking to Sinn Féin.

One of the most divisive aspects of this permanent two-horse race is that both communities are beginning to defame each other with the worst aspects of their elected representatives - ‘bigots’ on one side, ‘IRA supporters’ on the other. Far from parties changing cultures, their cultures are being projected onto everyone else.

Restoring Stormont to its original balance between designations rather than parties looks like the minimum requirement for unionist voters to hold the DUP to account.

There is an argument this would be putting ‘ugly scaffolding’ back up - taken in isolation, the St Andrews rule change was a move towards more democratic norms. But given Stormont’s present condition, who could argue it has been a success?

newton@irishnews.com