Opinion

Tom Kelly: Prospect of a Stormont deal is fading fast

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

The DUP: "Drunk with power" following their pact with the Tories
The DUP: "Drunk with power" following their pact with the Tories The DUP: "Drunk with power" following their pact with the Tories

As Christmas approaches the prospect of finding an agreement between Sinn Féin and the DUP in Santa’s sack is fast fading. They are as close and as far apart as they have ever been. The main issue is still one of trust or more precisely the lack of it.

The Sinn Féin leadership has good reason to be nervous about putting their equality agenda on the long finger just to jump back into bed with the DUP. However the subtlety of that tactic is starting to wear thin with the public. They also have the tricky process of succession management, which is more of an anointment process than an election, but nonetheless it’s a generational and momentous change.

The DUP for their part are too smug by far. The Tory deal has made them delusional and drunk on power. Though in politics anyone who can be bought today can be sold tomorrow. Immaterial of which party holds office at Westminster successive British governments have lived up to the moniker of ‘perfidious Albion’.

The Tories have particularly voracious and cannibalistic appetites when it comes to junior partners. Just ask Nick Clegg.

DUP hectoring of the Irish government for doing what they are supposed to be doing over Brexit is mind-blowingly naïve. Peter Robinson’s intervention in the debate was unwise - not least because when he was in office he hadn’t got the problem of Brexit.

The taoiseach for his part will have to keep an eye on his domestic matters as much as Brexit as Simon Coveney, his former challenger for leadership, now holds two powerful positions within the government – minister for foreign affairs and tánaiste.

As for the minority parties in Northern Ireland, well they are not at the races. The talks process has been constructed in a way that sidelines them completely. Unfairly they have been left like eunuchs at an orgy. The bi-lateral process is not working but they don’t even seem to have the interest or energy for a multi-party process.

At least back in the day, people like Hume, Mallon, Blair or Ahern would be coming up with new approaches. So despite the DUP-Sinn Féin Mexican stand off there’s little impetus or stimulus to get things up and running. There’s an array of talent in those small parties and the career aspirations of the best will be quashed if the whole thing collapses.

Rumour has it that the relationship between the DUP and the Alliance party has never been worse. To hardline Dupers, Alliance are latter day Lundys and to the liberal Alliance members the DUP right are like the Taliban. The late Mo Mowlam used to lament the lack of female leaders in Northern Ireland and often said that if only women led there would be more progress. That certainly hasn’t been borne out by the experience as Sinn Féin, the DUP and Alliance all have female leaders and we have been stuck in a rut for nearly a year.

Brexit and the DUP/Tory deal have become toxic to the process. People on both sides are retreating to traditional battle lines. The young Turks in the DUP brazenly bandy about barbed threats; and Sinn Féin members are talking up the prospect of ‘civil disobedience’ over the border.

On the plus side life is going on as usual. Shops are open, there’s food in the larder and the madness of the Christmas season has begun. That’s part of the problem for the politicians – the public is not missing them.

The engine of government administration trundles along but it’s without direction. The civil service can only paper over the cracks – it needs policy and decision making.

Secretary of state James Brokenshire is is ploughing a lonely furrow. He has been boxed in by the Tory deal so much that no-one on the nationalist side trusts him as an independent arbitrator. The truth is both the Irish and British governments are both too engrossed in the Brexit process to give much attention to Northern Ireland. In some ways we are lucky that the EU has an interest in the border and peace in Ireland.

It's not scaremongering to say that, combined with the prospect of hard border if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal and if Stormont is not restored, we may be actually sowing the seeds of discontent for a future generation. That’s a poor legacy if we do.