Opinion

Analysis: Stormont stunt exposes yet another DUP miscalculation

Pro-choice and anti-abortion groups protest at Stormont ahead of yesterday's hastily organised session. Picture by Mal McCann
Pro-choice and anti-abortion groups protest at Stormont ahead of yesterday's hastily organised session. Picture by Mal McCann Pro-choice and anti-abortion groups protest at Stormont ahead of yesterday's hastily organised session. Picture by Mal McCann

A chilly but bright autumn morning provided the backdrop for a variety of photo-opportunities, grand gestures and symbolic stunts at Stormont yesterday.

Parliament Buildings has been underused for nearly three years, so it was good to see the historic building back at the centre of the action, albeit fleetingly.

The day began with public demonstrations by both anti-abortion and pro-choice campaigners, who indulged the assembled media horde by posing for photographs and providing talking heads beneath Carson's imposing statue.

One one side, a once-unlikely coalition of Catholics and Protestants hoping the DUP could somehow reinstate the institutions and block Westminster's will; on the other those seeking to bring Northern Ireland women's reproductive rights out of the "Victorian era".

Surely nobody really believed that the legislation liberalising abortion law and, less controversially, legalising same-sex marriage would somehow be halted at the eleventh hour?

The reasons for Stormont's continued dormancy are well-rehearsed and there was never any likelihood of differences being temporarily parked, maintaining an increasingly unpopular status quo and giving kudos to the DUP in the process.

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With proceedings scheduled to begin at noon, attention soon shifted indoors, where an assembly chamber unseen since Martin McGuinness called time on the institutions in January 2017 would play host to the unfolding drama.

The start was delayed for an hour, however, as the anti-abortion MLAs spoke to Attorney General John Larkin in an effort to help advance their Defence of the Unborn Child Bill 2019.

With DUP hostilities against Jim Allister temporarily halted, there was hope that accepted procedures could be circumvented and that rather than having to elect a speaker and form an executive, MLAs could move directly to considering the private member's bill.

But Speaker Robin Newton, a man who's faced his fair share of criticism in the past, stood firm and rejected the arguments put forward by Arlene Foster, Edwin Poots and Paul Givan.

Whether by coincidence or contrivance, the broadcast shots of Mrs Foster had the party's five other female MLAs seated behind her. When it cut to her colleagues, however, the benches were populated exclusively by suited males. In the end, all were left seething with disappointment and anger.

The SDLP, whose anti-abortion West Tyrone MLA Daniel McCrossan had threatened to defy the leadership by attending yesterday's hastily organised session, were led into the chamber by Colum Eastwood, who used the platform to say his party would play no part in a unionist-dominated "talking shop".

After the leader said his piece, the party walked out en masse, taking with them the necessary cross-community support required to elect a speaker and form an executive.

And that was that. The Canutes had failed to stop the tide and Westminster's will prevailed, coming into force at midnight.

In many ways it was a disheartening, farcical episode and one that is unlikely to make the public pine for the dormant institutions.

For the DUP, it was yet another bloody nose and more evidence that the party once feted for its strategic manoeuvrings has become synonymous with miscalculation.