Arlene Foster is starting to wobble about standing down to get the executive back up. At the DUP’s manifesto launch - where Stormont was an ill-fitting priority in next week’s Westminster election - Foster declined to make her nomination as first minister a red line issue in the talks that will recommence the moment counting has finished. Instead, she defended her party’s right to nominate a candidate of its choosing. Combined with reports that a Stormont deal was almost done when the Westminster election was called, and it looks like the DUP is preparing for the mother of all surrenders. As usual for Sinn Féin, however, the southern angle remains decisive. What will a new Taoiseach have to say about devolution, and how likely is he to call an Irish general election while Stormont talks are underway?
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“It was an absolutely surreal situation,” said one witness to last Sunday’s murder in a Bangor retail park, which took place in front of the victim’s three-year-old son. “As a man lay fighting for his life, people were walking by blissfully unaware of what happened, carrying tins of paint and wallpaper under their arms.” This image perfectly sums up how loyalist violence might as well be occurring in a parallel universe as far as the rest of society is concerned. Who even remembers the murder in March, to which last weekend’s shooting has been linked? Police and politicians went through their usual condemnations but at this stage it might be kinder to shock loyalist communities with the truth: nobody cares, and nothing will be done to save them. They are completely on their own.
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Northern Ireland is as divided as ever and real change take another generation. So has opined Nancy Soderberg, a prominent aide to President Clinton during the peace process. She somewhat spoiled this observation by adding: “When I was involved in the early stages it was the women and the grass roots who demanded change and it will take them to step up and say let’s move on.” Apparently, Soderberg is unaware that women lead both our main parties and it is thanks to the grass roots that Stormont is on hiatus.
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At least Soderberg was involved in the peace process. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s claim to have played a role is contested history, to put it mildly - and as most of Britain is oblivious to our history, the claims are only becoming more absurd. News site Skwawkbox has published a “world exclusive” crediting Corbyn with negotiating the 1994 loyalist ceasefire, entirely on the premise that he and David Ervine both attended the Labour Party conference in Blackpool that year and “one week later, a ceasefire was called.” Skwawkbox may be a tiny operation widely accused of fake news but on Wednesday it was featured positively by the BBC 10 o’clock news. Perhaps we should follow this lead and simply deal with our past by re-writing it.
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An industrial tribunal has ruled that a community worker’s job in Derry was wrongly denied to the only applicant who met all the criteria and passed the interview. A report by Eamonn McCann on the Slugger O’Toole website indicates that in this instance, Sinn Féin influenced the decision while the DUP acquiesced to it. Presumably, the reverse also happens – that is the whole point of community funding stitch-ups and everyone knows it.
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At last May’s Nipsa annual conference, members of the public sector union resolved: “that the EU implements pro-austerity economic policies, advances anti-public service policies and has introduced anti-worker policies that have undermined hard earned terms of conditions and employment rights.” Opening this year’s conference in Newcastle on Wednesday, Nipsa general secretary Allison Miller told delegates: “Brexit must not be allowed to diminish workers rights and threaten our members’ job security.” Nipsa alternates between control by the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, the latter behind People Before Profit, so the comrades are bound to be confused. Fortunately, they can take the classic Trotskyist position that history never repeats itself.
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A BBC online report on Brexit and the Irish border has confirmed that no more of these reports should be filed until journalists have been sent to some other - indeed any other - land frontier for comparison. Then we might be spared breathless footage of people standing in fields marvelling that a line on the map is wiggly, one-dimensional, invisible to the naked eye and enables part of their body, cow or kitchen to be in another country. The same is true of almost every stretch of border in the world. No wonder the BBC made 75 episodes of Coast, each one repeatedly marvelling at the land meeting the sea.
newton@irishnews.com
