The first cuckoo of this spring was announced in the Irish Times last week, heard at Errislannon, near Clifden, County Galway.
Have you heard our own version here? It’s more reliable and predictable than the bird’s call and can be heard at any time of year. It’s the Lesser Spotted Politician’s ‘call for talks’.
In the cuckoo’s case it’s to announce its presence with a view to receiving a response and finding a mate. For minor politicians in the north it’s also a way to announce your existence but, unlike the cuckoo there’ll be no response; it’s a pointless exercise. In psychology the ‘call for talks’ would be described as a displacement activity, the political equivalent of kicking the cat, or for a dog to howl at the moon.
As any fule kno, there will be no talks, certainly not this week or next – a ridiculous suggestion. Not next month either. For those who don’t know, there are council elections next Thursday, so everybody has to stop campaigning and enter ‘talks’. Really? What’s the agenda? Who chairs them? Then, no sooner are the local elections over than parties begin canvassing for the Euro elections which may or may not take place on May 23.
In the unlikely event of Theresa May getting her Withdrawal Agreement through Westminster the elections will be called off. That’s May’s priority. Sure she’s got nothing else to do but think about this place for the next few weeks. So it’s really smart writing to her to convene ‘talks’ in the meantime.
Let’s get real. There aren’t going to be serious efforts to restore an executive until the autumn at the earliest when an assembly election becomes a legal requirement. Unless of course the NIO changes the law again and pushes the deadline past Christmas. Secondly, ‘talks’, like those the DUP walked away from last year, will be between the DUP and Sinn Féin, the only parties that count. If they can’t make a deal there’ll be no deal, so the Lesser Spotted Politicians’ ‘call for talks’ is an exercise in futility, a forlorn attempt to get noticed, or a demonstration of desperation, or all three.
Another piece of illogical thinking, a classic non sequitur, is the false linking of talks to ending street violence. There’s no connection. There’s no evidence that a working assembly has any effect whatsoever on the knuckle-draggers in Saoradh, the New IRA, CIRA, or any of the rest of the alphabetti-spaghetti that comprise the wilder shores of dangerously politically illiterate republican rejects.
On the contrary, in their Alice in Wonderland world they regard a working assembly as a betrayal of their Mad Hatter’s tea party where time is stopped forever at noon on Easter Monday 1916. Sporadic violence and a severe threat level continued throughout the decade of the DUP-Sinn Féin duopoly. Ending it depends on effective policing, not on having a executive.
Can we also have an end to the false equivalence between Sinn Féin and the DUP, so much beloved of the Lesser Spotted Politicians? It was DUP misdemeanours which brought an end to the executive in 2017. It was the DUP which ratted on the deal they made in February 2018 to restore an executive. It’s the DUP grip on the British government which prevents successful negotiations to restore an executive, or even convene a British-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference to discuss the north. The fact is that because of the confidence and supply deal between the Conservatives and the DUP – essentially a fundamental breach of the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement – there will be no return to Stormont unless and until there’s a new British government. How can you have ‘talks’ when the British government is in hock to one side? ‘Simples’, as Theresa May would say.
There is however, a silver lining. As the estimable Newton Emerson of this parish often points out, there’s a better chance of good decisions of governance being made by civil servants now that the executive is mothballed. The DUP and Sinn Féin were both so hamstrung by pork barrel politics that they were terrified of closing anything, however superfluous, or of opening anything that might annoy a nimby voter. You want to return to that?
