Opinion

Alex Kane: Even by our own crazy standards, this week in politics was a doozy

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

Alex Kane
Alex Kane Alex Kane

Until Monday I had never considered the possibility that Arlene Foster was a fan of The Clash.

Yet, in response to a question about what advice she would give to people who were planning to travel abroad (following Paula Bradshaw's on again, off again holiday plans), she said: "It's not up to me to tell people should they go or should they not go." I was longing for the punked-up Peter Weir and Edwin Poots to join her: "Should they stay or should they go now? If they go there will be trouble. And if they stay it will be double. So come on and let me know, should they stay or should they go? This indecision's bugging me..."

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I'm not sure from what punk band Steve Aiken derives inspiration, but his answer to the same question wasn't any more coherent: "The guidelines are there for people to look at them and follow and if you don't have a reason to be going abroad, what I'm saying is, and the decision I am making for myself, is I am not going anywhere, but it is up to people themselves. It's up to the people of Northern Ireland to make that decision, that's what the guidelines are for."

Yes, indeed! I'm pretty sure that quote will appear on an AQE/GL transfer paper in a couple of years time, with hard-pressed 11-year-olds asked to choose which of five possibilities - including utter gibberish - most accurately sums-up what the UUP leader was trying to say. I'm still not sure what he meant. And - though out of kindness I'll whisper it - I'm not convinced even he would know the answer if he saw the quote in two years time.

Rather wonderfully, Michelle O'Neill managed to invent an entirely new modification of Sinn Féin's 'Brits Out' policy when she made the case for either banning or quarantining (I wasn't entirely clear which was her real preference) people flying to Northern Ireland from Great Britain - in case they brought CV-19 with them. Ironically, she didn't seem to care about regulations on the border, which seemed to suggest that so long as it's all-island people who spread the disease between each other she won't lose too much sleep over it.

Sammy Wilson was also having a busy week, whingeing about the compulsory wearing of face masks and BBC licence fees and media bias - anything, in fact, to distract from the fact that the DUP opposition to a border down the Irish Sea now lies in tatters. It seems like only a few minutes ago that Sammy was viewed as a force to be reckoned with on the Conservative benches; but today it doesn't even require social distancing regulations in the House of Commons to keep most of them away from him.

Meanwhile, Francie Molloy seems to have been wearing his mask so tightly that he cut his oxygen intake to the point at which he began to hallucinate and tweeted that the Good Friday Agreement was a mixture of a pup and a bluff, a blup-up if you like. A Sinn Féin spokesman didn't actually deny the blup-up part of Francie's tweet, but did say the party remained committed to the agreement, including the provision for a blup-up poll at some point after Francie had returned to his senses. How long that will be is anyone's guess.

Adding another layer of bewilderment altogether the DUP and Sinn Féin gave the nod of approval to legislation that would make it easier for ministers to do their own thing in their own department, without worrying too much about collective responsibility, accountability, power-sharing or harmony.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that the big two quite liked the idea of a 'two governments in one executive' system and it looks as though they've now built the institutional/legislative equivalent of a flying buttress to make it work. The UUP - which didn't actually do anything during the debate - did come up with a belated amendment, but I'm pretty sure Arlene and Michelle will set aside other hostilities and combine to shore-up their own self-interests.

Yep, that was the week that was in local politics. The most bizarre we've seen for some time. Even by the normal standards of bizarre it was a doozy of truly epic proportions. So epically bad, in fact, that I sort of hoped the entire mob might have boarded a plane with Paula Bradshaw and cleared off on a one-way trip to la-la land. I'll check the guidelines.