Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Arlene and Michelle have both experienced the aloneness of leadership

First Minister Arlene Foster, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Dublin Castle for the first summit of the North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) since before Northern Ireland's powersharing administration collapsed. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye/PA Wire 
First Minister Arlene Foster, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Dublin Castle for the first summit of the North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) since before Northern Ireland's powersharing administration collap First Minister Arlene Foster, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill at Dublin Castle for the first summit of the North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) since before Northern Ireland's powersharing administration collapsed. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye/PA Wire 

Leadership, personal responsibility. The two ideas have been dancing the tango this past while, pace tightened by the woeful behaviour of supposed leaders, attention-grabbers Trump and Johnson in their different ways almost equally undeserving of trust in their judgment.

The two women who front the biggest parties here are more of a minor-key study in unimpressiveness, though in truth neither was chosen for leadership qualities.

Their parties have gone through something like the bends, plummeting from the eras of Adams, McGuinness, the once towering Paisley. Younger female front-women appealed to image-makers. Michelle O’Neill has the appearance of loyalty behind her, Arlene Foster apparently little. They voice lines prepared for them but in neither case is there a sense of cheerful, encouraging colleagues. The aloneness may be hard to bear.

O’Neill’s party inherited her from Martin McGuinness and the republican machine has no trouble keeping her on message, though apart from OTT Martina Anderson there are few spontaneous compliments. John O’Dowd’s brief and intriguing challenge has been the most interesting feature of her time in office. But at least republicans try to be consistent; fidelity must be professed at all times to the living and the dead. Whereas last week Foster was reportedly scolded by her deputy leader, chief whip, and Sammy Wilson playing himself, on top of the weaselly rebellion via abstention and straightforward absence of 13 out of 27 DUP MLAs.

It probably did nothing to lessen the sting that this was the first noted contribution of Nigel Dodds (did you remember he’s the deputy leader?) since John Finucane took North Belfast from him. Did it slightly test Foster’s gag reflex that the party’s benediction had just made the same chap a lord? She would certainly have been entitled to muse, as the chaps grizzled, that she became and remains leader primarily because Dodds refused the burden and nobody else could fake deference to Sir Jeffrey or Wilson.

Had they a point in challenging the revision of the St Andrews Agreement? Sounds likely enough. But so nakedly? She ploughed on but it was the second mini-heave against her of the summer. The first came as she initially said as little as possible about O’Neill and Sinn Féin’s flouting Covid regulations, in both spirit and letter, in connection with the Storey funeral.

Inside 24 hours Foster was jockeyed into a harsher stance by a party meeting, and a Donaldson public demand that O’Neill must go. If there was an acceptable rival it would be ‘Foster must go’. The ‘crisis’ melted, as Sir Jeffrey’s well-spoken flummery tends to, leaving another tidemark beside the RHI sludge of incompetence and poor judgment.

So the women trudge on, their wistfully talked-up personal bond presumably pretty strained thanks to Sinn Féin’s self-centredness. Did they make that reported joke in tandem about telling Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar how to power-share? What coordination they have extracted from Dublin is unclear. But it’s high summer, time for a break; you’d wish them a rest, and distraction.

Those who regard leaders in all spheres with clear eyes muddle on meanwhile, taking or not taking personal responsibility with society in mind, some reacting in ways out of character for them. The mask boycott of super-thran Sammy Wilson makes, at a guess, some people keener to wear them, but church services began on Sunday without a number of the usually-observant.

A couple of ageing Protestants from different denominations found an advance ‘Check List for Coming to Church’ irksome, requirement to ‘sit only in pews to which you have been directed by a steward’ and fill in a ‘pew sheet’ with name and phone number.

‘I’m not going back till this is over,’ one says. ‘Oh for goodness sake, what a faff,’ says the other. The first is ordained. The second chuckles, encouraged to hear that ‘the clergy are scoffing.’

They would hate it to be said but they sound a bit like Sammy.