A perception is taking hold that nationalism has given up on Stormont.
So far this is not borne out by voting patterns or opinion polls but those pushing the narrative have met no resistance. It is one year this week since the collapse of the draft deal to restore devolution, when the DUP’s base rejected a Sinn Féin offer to roll over on almost everything. Unionism has not budged an inch since.
But unionism has a realistic alternative to devolution in the form of direct rule. This has been increasingly demanded by both main unionist parties and has polled as the preferred outcome of a majority of DUP supporters.
What is nationalism’s alternative, given both its main parties have described direct rule as unacceptable? Anyone pronouncing Stormont dead needs an answer to that question. A united Ireland is not an immediate enough prospect to spare us at least another decade of the present limbo, which is almost nobody’s preferred outcome. If certain activists have reconciled themselves to breaking Northern Ireland ahead of a border poll they should be compelled to say so. After all, they can legitimately accuse unionists of breaking it first.
Joint authority was a common suggestion in the year after Stormont fell. Sinn Féin and the Irish government both suggested this could be in line with the Good Friday Agreement, focusing enough attention on the idea to establish it was unworkable and a breach of the agreement. It also polled surprisingly poorly among nationalists and is now rarely mentioned.
A newly fashionable suggestion is to fall back on the super-councils, ideally handing them Stormont’s powers. Nationalist-majority councils could then effectively opt out of Northern Ireland and attach themselves to the Republic with as much cross-border cooperation as possible.
This is a neat idea in theory but in practice it would mean little more than the average town-twinning project, accompanied by provocative grandstanding. Metropolitan councils in England have powers comparable to Stormont but that is because they serve populations as large as Northern Ireland’s so an equivalent here would require one super-duper-council - in other words, another Stormont. Short of that, a significant degree of direct rule would still be required to keep most public services going.
Ironically, we have only been spared direct rule because of the DUP-Tory deal, which nationalists have taken to blaming for Stormont’s collapse, despite the collapse occurring six months before the deal.
The British government clearly feels constrained in reintroducing direct rule at the DUP’s behest while the DUP props it up at Westminster. Nationalists have argued for the government to lean on the DUP to come to terms at Stormont, or to force the issue by legislating at Westminster for the deadlocked Stormont issues, such as an Irish language act or same sex marriage. But that gets stuck in the nationalist objection to direct rule or Westminster intervention in general. Logically, everything points back to Stormont.
At the Beyond Brexit conference in Belfast two weeks ago - an event one nationalist described to me as a gathering of “middle-class Sinn Féin supporters” - party president Mary Lou McDonald provoked tumbleweeds from the hall when she said devolution will need to be restored.
The same audience applauded calls to forget Northern Ireland and look to all-Ireland politics, yet seemed oblivious to how Stormont’s failure plays in the Republic.
People there associate the collapse with their vague sense of northern dysfunction, which they then vaguely associate with Sinn Féin. This is disastrous for the party and its cause. Sinn Féin is stuck at 13 per cent in the polls and its call for a vote on unity is widely rejected. Nationalists were excited by an RTE-commissioned survey last week showing 87 per cent of people would back a united Ireland over a hard border. Apart from that stark choice, however, the same poll showed support for a united Ireland dropping to 54 per cent. In northern terms, southerners are essentially soft-nationalist Alliance voters: they do not want a united Ireland without a united Northern Ireland.
Sinn Féin is ahead of its voters on this, which is why it offered the DUP such a generous deal last year. It is debatable if the party wanted Stormont to collapse in the first place: it seemed taken aback by the frustration of its grassroots. In a reversal of unionism’s classic Grand Old Duke of York manoeuvre, Sinn Féin was led by its supporters to the bottom of the hill. Somehow, it must march them back up again.
newton@irishnews.com
