Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Parties could agree among themselves and end the Stormont roulette

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who has threatened to collapse Stormont over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party annual conference last week
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who has threatened to collapse Stormont over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party annual conference last week DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who has threatened to collapse Stormont over the Northern Ireland Protocol, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party annual conference last week

If the protocol is not abandoned by October 31, the DUP may collapse the assembly.

If Westminster does not pass a language act by the same date, Sinn Féin might do the same.

So who, if anyone, will pull the trigger first? Will we see a destructive duet, or is it all just bluff on both sides?

Welcome to the world of Stormont roulette.

The power to determine Stormont’s future rests with Boris Johnson. He can please the DUP by triggering Article 16, thereby abandoning most of the protocol. Equally, he can push a language act through Westminster, bypassing the DUP’s opposition.

(An “Irish” language act also promotes Ulster Scots, which is far from being a language. However, its latter-day marketing complies with Stormont’s sectarian division of every aspect of northern society.)

So what will Boris do? He has three options: agree to both the DUP’s and SF’s demands; deny both, or agree to one but not the other.

He is most likely to back at least some of the DUP’s demand, by using the threat of Stormont’s collapse in his negotiations with the EU. Hence the EU’s new willingness to talk about the protocol, in what they claim are discussions, not negotiations.

If the protocol were diluted sufficiently to please the DUP, Stormont would survive under normal circumstances.

However, passing a language act at Westminster, as agreed with SF, may trigger a DUP walk-out.

That would be unnecessary since Westminster has already passed abortion legislation for here, but it has not yet been implemented. However, if Britain renege on the language deal, what will SF do? If they leave Stormont, their condemnation of the DUP’s threats will sound hollow. If they stay, they will have lost face.

Of course, the threats from both parties could be neutralised if Westminster adopted legislation agreed under the New Decade New Approach to pause a Stormont election for six months after a walk-out. If that were passed by the end of October, the executive could continue to function until April, just in time for the scheduled May election. That might be London’s best option.

However, the real solution is for the local parties to sideline Johnson by agreeing among themselves. There is no reason why SF cannot agree to significant modifications to the protocol and no reason why the DUP cannot support a language act.

Blind support by SF (and the SDLP) for the protocol suggests that nationalism puts politics before people. The EU’s (now defunct) carrot of a united Ireland led nationalists to be party to the blocking of over 700 medicines and many other goods from Britain to here (which gives some indication of their concept of Irish unity). Blaming Boris Johnson is correct, but not a solution, as the EU now recognises.

The DUP’s opposition to a language act is equally irrational. For many of them, their true linguistic origins lies in Scots Gaelic, which their ancestors spoke in the Scottish lowlands long before they adopted the English-based dialect, which they now claim as Ulster Scots.

Do they not know, for example, that East and West Kilbride come from Cille Bhrìghde (the church of St Brigit) or that the cross-channel ferry goes from the land of the descendants of Lathar, (Latharna or Larne) to the fat headland/nose, known as An t-Sròn Reamhar (Stanraer). Both Scottish examples are remarkably close to Irish.

If the DUP’s ancestors spoke Scots Gaelic, why can’t they? Many Presbyterians and Free Presbyterians in Scotland still hold Gaelic speaking Sunday Services. (Scots Gaelic good, Irish Gaelic bad.)

If they recognised Scots Gaelic as their true heritage, its close affinity to Ulster Irish would allow unionists and nationalists to develop a unique linguistic and cultural unity, rather than their current semantic sectarianism.

Instead, both parties indulge in what we might call, with appropriate sensitivity, the sectarian grooming of their separate electorates. Until voters recognise that, Stormont will continue to play roulette with all our futures.