Those were telling moments: Mary Lou McDonald purse-mouthed with extreme irritation, Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds almost airborne with anger. In both cases leading political figures were clearly frustrated by what journalists were asking them, as opposed to what they wanted to focus on.
This election campaign is novel in some ways and also a reminder of old truths. Two parties unable to face their own failings instead lash out at the media. One of their major, shared weaknesses is in their DNA.
In the case of Sinn Féin, McDonald’s refusal to reveal the result of the contest between her deputy and a challenger was reversed the following day. The announcement that Michelle O’Neill had won two thirds of the internal vote came way too late.
Instead the once-deft McDonald talked herself into the zinger of ‘there is no secrecy’, standing in front of a frozen-faced Michelle Gildernew and Conor Murphy, studying their shoes or the distance like the functionaries flanking Trump while he trashes sense and truth. O’Neill the victor had no speaking part until next day, when she baldly denied the u-turn had anything to do with media pressure.
But closing down public discussion had only fed suspicion that ‘the leadership’ believed support for John O’Dowd meant discontent, with O’Neill and maybe also McDonald. It also reminded the outside world that the secret army culture of control persists and ‘the leadership’ is in essence the IRA. Who in the words of McDonald’s predecessor ‘sued for peace’ and delivered decommissioning and acceptance of UK membership, until a majority here and in the south votes for Irish unification.
Neither DUP or UUP are able to process a peace-processing IRA, or refuse to, nor what relationship they themselves should have with loyalist paramilitaries. Foster and Dodds could only bring themselves to repudiate those posters in north and south Belfast by tacking on their routine demand for an SF condemnation of IRA violence.
The two parties’ shared background hangs round their necks. Each comes from beyond the pale, in SF’s case, in its IRA origins, from beyond the law.
Some still prominent republicans - not O’Neill, O’Dowd or McDonald - have IRA records, straightforward and reportable. Whereas the DUP has a reflex of suing for defamation, which served its founder well.
Libel suits cannot erase history. The recent Spotlight series was a reminder of political unionism’s equivocation, over more than a century, about violence and the threat of violence.
The DUP grew out of a church itself beyond the pale, tiny but disruptive vehicle for a monomaniac ever ready to see traitors among fellow unionists, and betrayal from London. The party (and church) finally managed to shake off a furiously reluctant Paisley, but the legacy is strong. Church and party history alike is of condemnation, rejection. Foster still insists SF is responsible for refusing to restore Stormont, despite chapter and verse revelation that a deal she agreed was rejected by party members.
The DNA the DUP shares with Sinn Féin is as outsiders, beleaguered and self-righteous. Though republicans value favourable coverage, both harbour deep hostility towards the media. Complaints of bias, feuds with particular journalists and boycotts of programmes are habits for the DUP and to a slightly lesser extent for SF. For both, accountability and transparency to wider society is irrelevant, out of the question.
Modern political parties – not just here – try to police media access to members, neutralise conferences, ‘control the narrative’. That suits the way SF and DUP think. But here and elsewhere parties are now caught on the hop by the democratic anarchy of social media, old, stupid tweets, jokes that aren’t funny in daylight. It may become steadily harder to discipline people who photograph their dinners on their phones.
Some think Foster will be shaken out by the RHI report, McDonald if southern election results don’t pick up. Change at the top will not re-make parties only partly thawed by time.
