Recognising business that is not essential and should therefore close while the coronavirus rages should not be difficult. Like giving police temporary powers to discourage people crowding open spaces. Wouldn’t you think?
Although there are undoubtedly other differences, it sounds as though these two subjects may be at the heart of Stormont disagreement. At least, these two are just about visible through the mist of well-meant boosterism. The DUP are terrified of crossing business interests. Sinn Féin dread blame for making the PSNI more powerful. The communal hum of ‘let’s pull together’ discourages putting politicians on the spot, on-air.
What comes through regardless suggests the two big parties have their separate worries while the three others in this mutually mistrustful administration are staying schtum. Alliance and the SDLP have never done well out of that kind of behaviour before.
It took until the weekend, late on Saturday, for police powers to be spelled out. This far into what the south is calling ‘the emergency’ and Britain ‘the crisis’ no list of firms that should close has yet emerged - although that wasn’t necessary in Britain, or the Republic. Now there is a ‘forum’ to define inessential made up of business, trade unions, a couple of the less senior ministers and labour relations experts. No matter how bad the crisis and how widely shared the fear, some are as desperate to avoid blame for firms closing, jobs lost. Reading between the lines, ‘forum’ means cover for politicians.
Why don’t firms just close without being listed? Chief executive of Manufacturing NI Stephen Kelly told the Belfast Telegraph that only those told to close were sure of being reimbursed under the British chancellor’s ‘furlough’ scheme. ‘Workers are assuming they can go home and Boris Johnson will pick up their bills. But that’s not the case.’ The only certainty was for businesses told to close. Edwin Poots, DUP agriculture minister, said it in another way on the BBC’s Sunday Politics. Every business was not entitled to government reimbursement, only those ‘severely impacted’. Otherwise workers would ‘go home with no pay.’
Perhaps because it has one of the largest workforces outside the clearly essential food-producing firms, the Portadown firm Ulster Carpets keeps getting mentioned. Michelle O’Neill named it in a briefing that set off a string of complaints.
This however was criticism of O’Neill for clashing with Arlene Foster. Asked were they saying firms should shut, O’Neill nodded during Foster’s terse ‘That’s not what I said.’ The O’Neill refrain of ‘we’ll close them down’ has all of SF’s bullishness about it, the last remnant of outsider status. But she is also right. How can a luxury carpet firm be essential?
Trying to appear united is one task too many, though muting criticism is maybe easier in regard to the man who must manage the biggest stretch of the frontline. The sole Ulster Unionist minister has the job nobody else wanted, even before it became today’s horror show. If Robin Swann is lost in there, who can wonder. Britain’s health frontmen are hardly winning applause for consistency, even in their own behaviour.
By contrast health minister Simon Harris is part of a Dublin government with no electoral legitimacy that is mostly hitting notes a terrified population welcome. Harris looks and sounds appropriately drained, Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney sound calm. As southern testing ramps up and the north lags behind, Sinn Féin are watching Fine Gael’s polling boom.
The Boris Johnson government is as divisive across Great Britain as the Irish/British divide here. Anecdotal evidence - aka social media and an ear to the ground - suggests that imitating London’s pace infuriates a considerable number who are not nationalist.
As on school closures, O’Neill is making points that won’t be made by Foster. Appointed as a figurehead, the SF woman is doing well while Foster faces a trial too far. Sir Patrick Coghlin let her off lightly, then this. And she cannot complain out loud.
