Good morning and welcome to the Ballygobackwards Political Advice Clinic. Take a seat in the waiting-room and we’ll get around to you as soon as we can, there are a lot of clients today.
First in line is Theresa May: Good morning, prime minister. Whatever faults and failings have been placed at your door, you’ve shown great assiduity, or to put it more folksy terms, “stickatitness”. But are you wasting your time? Have the fates decreed that Rees-Mogg and Boris will triumph at the end of the day? Would you be better off announcing your retirement and heading off with hubby Philip to take the sun on foreign beaches and work out some new dance routines?
Our advice is: not just yet, Theresa. We recall how you tripped the light fantastic to the strains of Dancing Queen at the Tory conference and you were also strutting your stuff on that African trip. But there is another Abba number called The Winner Takes It All and you just might edge the ball over the line in the end. If you avoid meeting your Waterloo, everyone except Johnson and Jacob will be applauding you as a Super Trouper. Good day, prime minister and Thank You for the Music.
Next up is the Sinn Féin president. Yes, Mary Lou, we know you are keen to acquire another title or two: tánaiste/deputy taoiseach and minister for, say, foreign affairs in the next Dublin government.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil representatives have of course rejected the concept of coalition with your party – but, after a general election, politics often turns into a numbers game. And there is intense speculation – amounting to virtual certainty in some circles – that Dáil Éireann will be dissolved in late autumn to let the people have their say. The Fianna Fáil grassroots are tired of sustaining the Fine Gael-led government in a confidence-and-supply agreement and they want a chance to grab the reins of power.
Maybe that’s why you’ve been doing so many media “doorsteps” of late, Deputy McDonald. They’ve generally worked out well for you, apart from that unfortunate gaffe over the suitability of senior members of the PSNI for the chief constable position. Gerry Kelly did his best at damage limitation but this Political Advice Clinic would suggest that you cut back on your workload, Mary Lou, and give yourself more time to consider in advance what you are going to say.
Now, the gentleman with the beard: Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t it? We’ve been thinking hard about what you can do to combat allegations of anti-semitism in the Labour Party. For a long-time radical like you, it must seem like the world turned on its head that a left-wing organisation is facing such allegations. It’s a very serious issue and you need to make doubly sure that support for the just and legitimate cause of Palestinian human rights by the labour movement is not contaminated in any way, shape or form by anything that could be even remotely construed as prejudice against the Jewish community. And here’s another suggestion: you should set aside time at the earliest opportunity for a visit to Auschwitz concentration camp and give full expression to your feelings afterwards to the media.
Next please: ah, there you are, Arlene Foster. We are told that the report of the inquiry into the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme may come out fairly soon. It seems unlikely to be the happiest day in the life of the DUP. There will of course be intense interest in any observations concerning your good self, Arlene. Be assured that Sinn Féin will not be expressing sympathy for any points of criticism that might emerge – they won’t even be shedding crocodile tears, never mind real ones. But you might take hope from the comments of Irish minister for foreign affairs Simon Coveney to a committee at Leinster House last week, where he warned against allowing the report to “delay even further the opportunity to get an Executive up and running”.
And who’s that sitting across from you, Arlene, could it be... ah yes, it’s Colum Eastwood. Well, well, you’ve had an interesting few weeks in your role as SDLP leader. The reaction to your party’s tie-up with Fianna Fáil has been pretty negative and the prophets of doom are out in force, predicting dire consequences at the polling-booth. Hmm, maybe in the short-term you could suffer some setbacks but in the long run it should benefit you to have a formal link with a southern party and a clear all-Ireland dimension. One of your distinguished predecessors was prone to say: “It is not territory that must be united, but people”. A noble sentiment from John Hume, but the way things are going in demographic terms, we just might end up with both!
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