There comes a point when you realise that nothing is going to change in Northern Ireland.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could be sitting around the executive table, setting out the gory details of their strategy to destroy everyone and everything on earth, and the DUP and Sinn Féin would somehow manage to contrive to turn it into an Orange versus Green thing. Indeed, I'm pretty sure Michelle O'Neill would ask for utter destruction to be put on hold until a border poll had been conducted.
Almost 20 years ago - just before the assembly was placed in suspended animation for five years - Martin McGuinness announced his intention to end the 11-plus transfer system. There was no discussion with the other members of the executive, let alone other parties: he just made a unilateral decision. Yet during the negotiations at St Andrews in 2006 Sinn Féin left open a door - and McGuinness fully understood the consequence of leaving it open - which meant it would be possible for an unregulated transfer system to replace the 11-plus.
And within two years of the rebooted executive being formed in 2007 - with the DUP and SF at its centre - the new unregulated transfer system was rolled out. It was described by its opponents as 'temporary' and my eldest daughter, Megan, sat it. Eleven years on and it remains unregulated, 'temporary' and unreformed. No education minister since 2007 (Ruane, O'Dowd and Weir) has made a serious effort to change it: resulting in the absurd situation we have right now, where the AQE, a private company, can reach an agreement with its client grammar schools and Weir says he doesn't have the authority to intervene.
My middle child, Lilah-Liberty, was due to sit the transfer test in December, then in January and now in February. I wrote a piece in October suggesting the AQE and Department of Education war-game the contingency plans in case the test was cancelled altogether. They didn't. They still haven't. The executive, meanwhile, has dithered and can-kicked the issue, prompting me to tweet an AQE sample question a few days ago:
How long will it take the executive to reach a decision on exams?
A) As long as it takes a constipated mathematician to work something out with a pencil?
B) As long as it takes a minister to leak something to the Nolan Show?
C) Not before it has another 3 year break?
What is clear is that elements within the executive (including SF, which is still unwilling to acknowledge that McGuinness' unilateral action 20 years contributed to the present mess) are trying to use the present health crisis to kill off academic selection. The logic of their position seems to be that if you get it stopped for one year - and maybe put on ice again in November, depending on potential ongoing threats from the virus - then it makes it easier to get it stopped altogether. That way lies another huge crisis for the executive: which is maybe what some want.
At moments like this I'm accused of lazy journalism or 'false equivalence' (which is SF's catch-all phrase for anyone, in any context, who seems to be criticising the party) by including the entire executive in my criticism, rather than singling out particular parties. But the fact of the matter is that the entire executive is to blame. In the most recent manifestation - January 2020 - five parties practically fell over each other to get their place around the table: yet every single party knew that nothing had been done to reform vetoes, blocking mechanisms and the Petition of Concern.
So they all knew that crisis would follow crisis, stand-off would follow stand-off and absurdity would follow absurdity.
The three smaller parties knew full well that the DUP and SF would deliberately rub each other up the wrong way: and knew, too, that both would play exclusively to their own gallery. The DUP and SF planned to do it all along, anyway, reckoning it pleases their voter base.
These realities are never going to change. How we do political business in Northern Ireland is never going to change.
Direct rule or Irish unity wouldn't make a button of difference, either, because the vast majority of unionist and republican voters would continue to despise each other. The Four Horsemen would just shrug their shoulders, holster their weapons and conclude there's nothing left to destroy here. Armageddon might look like a more attractive option than what we endure now.
