It was not the iceberg which sank the Titanic. It was the belief by those in charge that the ship could never sink.
Similarly, it was not the RHI scandal which sank Stormont. It was that same sense of complacency (some might even call it arrogance) that no matter how unethical or incompetent the behaviour of our politicians, the SS Stormont would always remain afloat.
That, sadly, is what the evidence from the RHI inquiry has indicated so far. It reveals a remarkable degree of managerial and administrative carelessness, overseen by a minister who appears to have confused delegating authority with abdicating responsibility. (Although, in fairness, that is a common trait in the public sector.)
While the story has an immediate relevance in relation to identifying those who failed to do their job, its real significance is what it tells us about the values, ethos and attitude of ten years of Sinn Féin-DUP rule. It is a story which suggests that RHI is a symptom of a more serious political illness and one which will recur as long as the present system of government remains unchanged.
So where, you ask, is the evidence for such unpatriotic (or should that be patriotic) sentiments? (SF used to argue that it was patriotic to support Stormont, but now it appears to be patriotic to criticise it - well, the DUP bit of it anyway. Patriotism here is a bit like the weather - changeable.)
Until the RHI inquiry, the evidence of Stormont's failings could only be gathered from the underwhelming nature of its outputs in areas such as health, education, infrastructure and social welfare. The inquiry has now offered additional evidence about the dysfunctional nature of how it operated.
While most governments have difficulty in delivering all they promised, Stormont's problem was that it was built on the belief that a failed one-party sectarian government should be replaced by a two-party sectarian government. (Yes, there were five parties, but the other three were props rather than players.)
It was a flawed theory, because it was predictable that both parties would separately replicate what unionism had done under one-party government.
Both major parties operated the old unionist system of patronage and privilege for their electorates, some of which offered real rewards in terms of money and jobs to favoured individuals and organisations. (RHI was a prime example.) But much of the privilege was imaginary, based largely on fostering fears about the other side and its potential for discriminatory practice.
In fairness it was a clever system, because although it did little to achieve social or economic progress, it did not have to. All it had to do was survive to gain international adulation. Those who praised it most were those who did not have to live under it.
It was into this political and administrative culture that RHI was born in 2011 and grew until 2017, even though it had been subject to a damning Audit Office report in 2016. The report identified "serious systemic weaknesses from the start" of a scheme which was "potentially vulnerable to abuse."
But even more than the Titanic, Stormont could not sink, because it had already hit several icebergs and survived. The biggest of these was Nama's sale of property originally worth £4.5 billion to a private US company for £1.3 billion, with allegations of fixer fees of over £7 million.
Stormont sailed on, fuelled by what appears to have been a combination of mutual blindness and consensual amnesia. The executive had become the untouchables and the full story of Nama has yet to be told.
The problem with RHI was that it could not be hidden, because it involved the public. The media, which was so supportive of Stormont ten years earlier, had become the official opposition, by exposing a culture of secrecy and poor performance.
But the real iceberg which Stormont hit was not RHI, but Sinn Féin's declining electoral support. Recognising that northern SF's leadership had gone too far ahead of the rank and file, Gerry Adams pulled the plug on Stormont.
Cleverly, he distanced Sinn Féin from RHI (even though it had apparently ignored the Audit Office report) by arguing that Stormont was not delivering for nationalists. Since leaving Stormont, Sinn Féin has emphasised that point, rather than accepting joint responsibility for RHI and the nature of governance which allowed it to happen.
The inter-party talks, which collapsed recently, offered no suggestion that if Stormont returns, its culture of governance will change. You see, RHI happened because we did not get the government we needed. We just got the one we deserved.
