Opinion

Alex Kane: Politicians in a divided society should take more care with their language

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.

"Edwin Poots is not stupid". Picture by Justin Kernoghan
"Edwin Poots is not stupid". Picture by Justin Kernoghan "Edwin Poots is not stupid". Picture by Justin Kernoghan

Why do we continue to allow ourselves to get so worked up when a politician says something which he/she knows is so open to 'misinterpretation' that a coach and horses pulling a wagon-load of elephants could gallop through?

Edwin Poots is not stupid. As soon as the comment about Covid and nationalist areas fell from his lips he knew it would be sectarianised. He knew it would become a Catholic versus Protestant thing. And yet knowing all of that, he continued to allow it to rumble on for five days before issuing a non-apology by way of throwing the Bobby Storey funeral into the mix.

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Poots wasn't going to give a stuff about the reaction of Sinn Féin, the SDLP or Alliance. He was going to care less about the reaction of the UUP leader Steve Aiken. No one in the DUP, least of all Arlene Foster, was going to criticise him, let alone discipline him. He knew, too, that the vast majority of DUP supporters probably agreed with what he had said; and knew, too, that anything which fired up nationalist/republican anger against him would fire up unionist/loyalist support for him.

We had seen the same sort of fallout with recent comments from John O'Dowd (his 'bastards' comment), Martina Anderson (on the pension for victims) and even Michelle O'Neill (her monumentally cack-handed approach to the Storey funeral).

But, like Poots, all three knew that not one vote would be lost to Sinn Féin because of what they had said. Indeed, they may actually have added to the next tally.

One other thing I know for certain, within a few hours of this column being published a handful of Sinn Féin supporters on social media will be accusing me of the sin of 'false equivalence' for daring to suggest that what Poots did should be regarded as even remotely similar to what O'Dowd, Anderson and O'Neill did. 'False equivalence' has become the catch-all mantra for turning every criticism of Sinn Féin into an excuse to revisit the greatest hits of unionist stupidity while distracting from similar stupidity on their own side.

Maybe it's time we just accepted that there will be people on both sides who will deliberately say things in the knowledge - probably even hope - that it will attract the predicted mix of controversy and criticism? To be honest, I've also fallen into the trap and allowed myself to get worked-up by a piece of pettiness from one side or the other: mostly from the usual suspects.

Alex Kane
Alex Kane Alex Kane

So, should we ignore it? Should we just move onto another story rather than add fuel to the fire by focusing on it for days on end? Or, this being Northern Ireland, would ignoring it only encourage someone else to push the boat out even further and say something so utterly reckless it would do real, lasting damage to the political/peace process? I have a friend, a church minister, who deplores the language and attitude of some of these 'moments,' yet suggests they should maybe be viewed as 'letting off steam' moments'; something, he argues, which occasional relieves a build-up of community pressure on one side or the other.

Hmmm. I sort of understand where he's coming from, yet I do worry that the 'acceptable level' of insult argument simply encourages some to see how far they can push the level. It's actually been three years since Arlene Foster mentioned the 'crocodile'; six years since Gregory Campbell said 'curry my yoghurt'; and six years since Gerry Adams referred to unionists as 'bastards'; yet each one of those insults is still referenced on a regular basis. It reminds me of the journalist Gerry Moriarty's paraphrasing of Newton's third law: 'In Northern Ireland that translates as, for every tribal insult there must be an equal and opposite tribal insult.'

Social media is upping the ante, too. If mainstream politicians use intemperate language or deploy comments they know will be viewed as insulting, then we can hardly be surprised if it is pushed far further by their supporters online. I'm not suggesting that the rough-and-tumble of debate becomes so anodyne that the subject of the debate is rendered meaningless, but I am saying that politicians in an already very divided society should practice a great deal more care with their choice of language. Division is already difficult enough to contain in Northern Ireland.