Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Like Trump, our two main parties prefer electioneering to governing

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

President Donald Trump continues to electioneer. Picture by Brynn Anderson, Associated Press
President Donald Trump continues to electioneer. Picture by Brynn Anderson, Associated Press President Donald Trump continues to electioneer. Picture by Brynn Anderson, Associated Press

You will have your own reasons for disliking Donald Trump, but among his more distasteful characteristics is his refusal to stop electioneering and start governing. Mr Trump has obviously no idea how government works, but it does not matter because he does not intend to govern any time soon.

To conceal his political and administrative limitations, he fosters perpetual division in society, portraying himself sometimes as a victim and sometimes as a hard man who is not going to remain a victim.

He thrives on confrontation, which he uses to avoid his responsibilities in government and when he fails in government (as he has done consistently so far) he blames the media.

Thank God, you say, that we do not live in America. Thank God, indeed, but we live here and while it is a question which will not please everyone, it is tempting to ask: what is the difference between Trump's style of confrontational non-governance and that adopted by Sinn Féin and the DUP?

There is no suggestion that either party shares Mr Trump's political views (well, not counting both parties' support for lower taxes for big business and the DUP's rejection of climate change) and, in fairness, neither party seems keen to start a war with North Korea.

However, like Mr Trump, our two main parties appear to prefer electioneering to governance - even when they are in government. They have now refined this technique so well, that they no longer bother with government. MLAs just do electioneering, a process which has cost us £6 million since January in salaries and expenses.

You might argue that all political parties in western democracies rarely stray from their manifestos. True, but most of them govern between elections. Stormont has not.

The evidence lies, for example, in health and education. In health more than a quarter of a million people are waiting for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment, 72,000 are waiting on inpatient admission and 110,000 are waiting on a diagnostic service. (Where is the equality, integrity and respect for them?)

In education, most schools are now insolvent. The education department cannot make ends meet, secondary schools are not adequately funded to offer an appropriate range of subjects and many primary school children must now provide their own equipment such as pencils and paper.

We might draw two conclusions from this. The first is that ten years of Sinn Féin-DUP rule has not improved society, despite the last Programme for Government's claim that "Government here is a force for good."

The second is that the two main parties prefer confrontation to governing. In all the current bickering, neither party has mentioned children, the aged or the sick. As Trump illustrates, confrontation has no room for humanity.

The current confrontation is about an Irish language act, which was not SF's reason for collapsing the assembly. This column supports an Irish language policy, which would then lead to legislation. If we are going to have an act, let us see the policy.

SF has not issued a policy and the DUP has not sought one. The policy might encourage more widespread engagement with the language, or provide access to public services for those who are fluent. It could be both, or it could be somewhere between the two.

Legislation alone will not necessarily guarantee Irish language promotion. De Valera's 1937 constitution declared Irish as Ireland's first official language. Eighty years later, Údarás na Gaeltachta now predicts that Irish will no longer be the primary language in Gaeltacht areas by 2025.

No one knows this better than Gerry Adams, who has rightly criticised the Dublin government's policy and branded it a failure. SF might therefore be expected to recognise the limitations of legislation in language promotion and then develop broader policy objectives for its promotion in the north.

It has not done so, which has produced confrontation rather than governance with a grateful DUP. Ah but, you say, this is a divided society. You have a point, but there is nothing inherently wrong with community relations here which could not be resolved if the two main parties ended their phoney sectarian war. Like Mr Trump, both parties need an enemy to generate perpetual electioneering.

We have had our fill of electioneering. What we need now is government, but until there is a non-sectarian Stormont, we will always have the British-inspired, age-old, sectarian division.

Mr Trump creates issues of confrontation. We are different. We have them built into our system of government, which may explain why Trump can steal 4,000 aerospace jobs from us. Aren't you glad you do not live in America?