Opinion

Newton Emerson: Sinn Fein's Stormont opposition move is all about getting an SDLP mudguard

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.

Stormont talks resume 07/05/2019. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald speaks to the media at Stormont after the political partys meet. Picture Mark Marlow.
Stormont talks resume 07/05/2019. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald speaks to the media at Stormont after the political partys meet. Picture Mark Marlow. Stormont talks resume 07/05/2019. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald speaks to the media at Stormont after the political partys meet. Picture Mark Marlow.

The only significant leak and novel detail to emerge from the Stormont talks so far appeared one month ago in the Sunday Business Post, which reported that on the opening day of the talks the week before, Sinn Féin began by asking the UUP, SDLP and Alliance to commit to entering the executive.

In other words, a reconvened Stormont should have no opposition.

This demand was made just after last month’s local government elections, which kicked off the Alliance surge and provided the first evidence of Sinn Féin’s softening vote. Republican nervousness might have been excusable, even if it involved the sort of demand Sinn Féin would normally denounce as a precondition.

But the demand has continued despite the smaller parties firmly rejecting it and - more tellingly - despite a set of southern election results that should have caused a speedy rethink.

The broad explanation coalescing around the collapse of Sinn Féin’s vote in the Republic is that the electorate perceives it as a party in permanent opposition mode and hence unfit for government.

It is disastrous and almost laughable for Sinn Féin to reinforce that perception by saying it will only go into government if nobody else goes into opposition.

There was an attempt to finesse this message last weekend when Sinn Féin said it wants any new executive to be a “progressive partnership”, reflecting the cross-community majority against Brexit and for the so-called equality agenda.

As the UUP is against all of that, why is its participation being demanded?

The answer, as if it was not obvious, lies in the attack line Sinn Féin representatives and supporters have repeated for a month, chiding the SDLP or “SDLP/Fianna Fail” for wanting republicans back in government but not going back themselves.

Sinn Féin’s opposition to opposition is all about getting an SDLP mudguard, which would be rather too obvious if a matching UUP mudguard was omitted.

This really is the republican movement at its most pathetic. It campaigns under the slogan of “leadership”, spends every weekend in graveyards proclaiming its courage and militancy and as far as is known still considers itself the sole legitimate government of the island of Ireland, to the extent where nothing it does is apparently unlawful or undemocratic.

Yet it will not go back into a glorified county council unless it can point to Colum Eastwood and cry “he did it too!”

Even the DUP under the control-freak leadership of Peter Robinson quickly learned to relax about opposition - and opposition evolved at Stormont as a unionist-only phenomenon, targeted specifically at the DUP, with the UUP informally withdrawing from the executive then backing a private member’s bill to regularise the arrangement.

What is the mighty Sinn Féin afraid of? The SDLP has been in decline for 20 years, republicans are hardly competing for votes against the UUP and if the concern is losing support to Alliance then perhaps Sinn Féin should stop hinting it has told its supporters to switch to Alliance.

Reversing Stormont’s evolution towards an official opposition would imply returning the institution to its original Good Friday Agreement “factory settings”, as former UUP leader Mike Nesbitt has suggested. However, Sinn Féin is not suggesting that, no doubt because it would also reset all the stitch-ups that have been to the party’s liking, such as tightening up community designation rules or turning the appointment of the first minister from a consensus into a competition.

The only progressive change there has been to Stormont’s structures since the Good Friday Agreement has been the freedom of smaller parties to opt out of mandatory coalition and present the possibility, at least in theory, of a cross-community alternative.

It is clear Sinn Féin’s particular concern about returning to office is welfare reform - it does not want to be the only nationalist party responsible for what has become a highly contentious policy. However, Sinn Féin has only itself to blame for the contention. It worked out an excellent mitigation package and transitional policies with the DUP and the British government under the 2015 Fresh Start agreement.

Then, incredibly, instead of taking credit for this, Sinn Féin blamed the SDLP for accepting some welfare mitigation under a different context a decade before. ‘They did it too!’ was the cry.

Sinn Féin now claims it wants to re-enter Stormont to advance radical policies. It may even genuinely believe this. But neither the party nor Stormont’s futures are served by believing government is only about winning praise while passing the buck.

newton@irishnews.com