Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Not one party has apologised for the mess created in health, education and the economy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

The parties blame Westminster for our problems. Picture by Laura Lean/PA Wire
The parties blame Westminster for our problems. Picture by Laura Lean/PA Wire The parties blame Westminster for our problems. Picture by Laura Lean/PA Wire

The five main parties' election broadcasts here all have one thing in common. None of them contain a single word of apology.

Their MLAs have been absent from work for three years, while collecting their salaries and expenses, totalling almost £100 million in that period.

We pay them about £3 million every month. They do nothing in return and now they want our votes. (The words "neck" and "brass" spring to mind.) You may well ask if the DUP, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, UUP and Alliance have no sense of shame, embarrassment or even basic political decency.

The main parties must be aware of the mess they have created here in health, education and social care. Could they not find time during their slick broadcasts to apologise to the 300,000 people here waiting for a first appointment with a consultant?

How about a word of regret for financially undermining our education system, or for failing the 85,000 children here in poverty? That's 20 per cent of children. In parts of North Belfast, it is 60 per cent. (Yes, North Belfast - that's where they are holding a sectarian head-count in place of an election.)

The parties blame Westminster for our problems. But these same parties signed the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) allowing Westminster to govern us, without any preconditions on funding.

Anyone with the slightest appreciation of political theory could have foreseen austerity. But the politicians obtained good jobs and created a government which had no system of accountability, because it had no opposition. (It was democracy, but not as we know it.)

Ah but, say the main parties, this election is different. (No, it is not. We have never had a different election here since elections began.) In an attractive blend of denial and delusion, all their broadcasts suggest that public services here collapsed and they had nothing to do with it.

SF says their MPs have been "there for you where it matters." (No, they haven't. They have been everywhere except where it matters.) Westminster does not care about us, they say. Of course it doesn't. Who does? Leo Varadkar? (His health service is worse than ours.) Stormont? (The parties there, including SF, care so much they couldn't be bothered turning up.

Sinn Féin says it is time to build "things that matter" like health and education. Why did it not build them when they were in government here for nine years, especially with SF ministers in charge of education for most of that time?

The DUP broadcast is equally removed from reality. Arlene says our children are growing up in a better north (has she seen the school budget deficits?) and that the money the party obtained from Westminster is tackling hospital waiting lists. (Really?)

The DUP does not mention Brexit, but the SDLP mentions little else. It demands more money for health and social care, but not for education. It demands (the SDLP does demanding very well) that the north should be separate from the UK, although in 1998 it urged us to remain in that same UK. But then inconsistency is an art best practised in politics

Alliance tells us to demand better, but from whom should we demand it - an empty Stormont? It says we should have a second EU referendum because people can change their minds. (So, if we don't like the result, can we have another election in January?) Finally, the UUP tells us that there is a crisis in health and education and that Stormont must be cleaned up (as if they were never in the Executive).

The best form of apology is changed behaviour, but there is little chance of that, unless someone comes to your door and says, "I am here on behalf of my party to apologise for the appalling mess we have created in health, education and the economy".

In that case, bring them in and make them a cup of tea. But don't worry about stocking up on tea bags. You'll not need too many.