This time last year Alliance members were buoyant. The party had just emerged from last March’s snap Stormont election having held its eight seats in a reduced assembly and having secured its biggest percentage share of the vote for 30 years.
It was Naomi Long’s first conference since succeeding David Ford as leader and she had spelled out her party’s preconditions if offered the justice minister’s post in the executive. The opportunity never arose, however, and 12 months on we still have no executive. The Alliance Stormont team that was so re-energised in the aftermath of the 2017 election finds itself locked out of the assembly chamber.
But the party is reluctant to assume the role of passive spectators and has endeavoured to break the devolution deadlock by tabling a series of proposals it believes can inject a new dynamic into the floundering process.
It’s widely acknowledged that Alliance’s proposals on an Irish language act were adopted in the DUP-Sinn Féin draft accommodation that fell at the final hurdle last month. Its ‘middle ground’ position gives it an ideal perspective for formulating compromises though the success of such initiatives ultimately rests on others’ desire to find an accommodation.
Since the collapse of the talks, attitudes on the unionist side especially appear to have hardened and the prospect of a return to devolution before the end of the year is remote.
The lack of a functioning regional government hung over Saturday’s conference like a dose of bad flu. Alliance feels the possibilities for creating the shared society it aspires to are noticeably diminished by Stormont’s absence and among its MLAs there’s an almost palpable frustration at this situation.
This was also the first conference in five years where delegates weren’t either coming out of an election or preparing for one, so it was difficult to rally any enthusiasm.
The conference atmosphere was accordingly rather flat but perhaps it would be unfair to blame this state of affairs entirely on Alliance.
