Opinion

Newton Emerson: We are drifting towards Finchley

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 DUP and Sinn Féin have framed the council election as a vote on a border poll. Picture by Mal McCann
The DUP and Sinn Féin have framed the council election as a vote on a border poll. Picture by Mal McCann The DUP and Sinn Féin have framed the council election as a vote on a border poll. Picture by Mal McCann

THE clash of Brexit and citizenship in Northern Ireland has suddenly been addressed by Dublin.

Speaking in the Dáil and again in Downpatrick, Tánaiste Simon Coveney vowed to ensure Irish citizens in Northern Ireland will continue to enjoy the full benefits of EU citizenship, even if the Irish government has to pay for it.

Coveney cited European medical cards and the Erasmus academic exchange programme and promised to enact similar fixes for all EU benefits.

He also said he expected the UK government to fix the separate issue of renouncing British citizenship, raised by the DeSouza case, as Dublin considers it a breach of the Good Friday Agreement.

While actual solutions remain to be produced, confirmation of intent matters after two years of silence during which these matters became needlessly contentious.

Compared to the Brexit border, the citizenship problem is easy.

It should never have been allowed to cause so much concern.

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Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, has addressed the Dáil and Westminster's hardline Brexiteer European Research Group, informing them there will be no US-UK trade deal in the event of a hard border or undermining of the Good Friday Agreement.

Pelosi can stand over her words - both houses of Congress have final approval on a trade deal.

This is a huge diplomatic coup for Ireland, or an undiplomatic coup from a British perspective.

But in economic terms it is surprisingly meaningless. There is no current EU-USA deal, so the UK loses nothing without one.

Convention in the United States is for trade deals to be negotiated by the White House, which only the ERG fancies embarking on under a Trump presidency.

For the soft Brexit majority of MPs, Pelosi's words will have been quietly banked as useful.

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Sinn Féin and the DUP had already framed next month's council election as a vote on a border poll.

Launching the DUP's manifesto, leader Arlene Foster added it is also a contest to be the largest party, as republicans would use victory to "strengthen their demand for a border poll".

In truth, with only Sinn Féin and Aontú campaigning for a poll, their probable 30 per cent-plus combined result will hardly create a mandate for it.

The only implication of Sinn Féin overtaking the DUP would be the prospect of a republican first minister after an assembly election.

Such an election is legally required this Autumn if Stormont is not restored.

Would Sinn Féin taking the top stop in the council contest inspire the DUP to rush back to Stormont?

Conversely, would Sinn Féin be motivated to hold off for an assembly election?

Is the DUP even prepared to serve with a Sinn Féin first minister? It has never answered that question.

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A leaflet issued by two UUP candidates in east Belfast, including media regular Jim Rodgers, claims Alliance councillors vote "time and time again" with "the Provisional IRA's political wing".

This is irresponsible in an area where a similar unionist leaflet led to threats and attacks against Alliance representatives during the flag protests.

As an act of political positioning it is also unbelievably dim.

The UUP should be sitting comfortably in the huge space between the DUP and Alliance, gaining transfers from both.

Nowhere would those transfers be more substantial than in east Belfast.

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The Green Party's centrist positioning in Northern Ireland is in jeopardy from Scottish colleagues, who have decided to be more gung-ho than the SNP on another independence referendum.

The Greens, who hold the balance of power in Edinburgh, reckon outdoing the nationalists on nationalism will give them a boost, while failure to hold or win a referendum can only do the SNP harm.

The various Green parties around the UK are distinct organisations and the Northern Ireland Greens may need to emphasise that as the mounting row in Scotland comes to wider attention.

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With candidates for a likely European election being selected in the middle of the council campaign, mixed messages are inevitable.

Few will be more mixed than from the UUP, which lightly opposed Brexit in 2016, swung in favour in 2017 and has since claimed to be more anti-backstop than the DUP.

Candidate Danny Kenny was one of his party’s most forthright opponents of Brexit ahead of the 2016 referendum.

He is on record saying leaving the EU would damage the economy, infrastructure and the health service and that the Brexit debate's focus on reducing immigration was nonsense.

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Survivors of historical institutional abuse have lost a High Court action to force the secretary of state to pay them compensation, as recommended in January 2017 by the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry, just two weeks after Stormont collapsed.

Making these victims, like so many victims, pawns in the game to restore devolution is morally unconscionable.

It has also now produced an extraordinary legal judgment.

The High Court ruled "the governance vacuum in Northern Ireland does not infringe any principle of constitutional law".

If there is no requirement for Northern Ireland to have either devolved ministers or direct rule ministers, then indirect rule is de facto UK integration. We are drifting towards Finchley.

newton@irishnews.com