Opinion

Tom Kelly: Threatening big stick measures won't work

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.

Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris. picture by Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris. picture by Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris. picture by Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Many, many moons ago, when loyalists tried to destroy power-sharing, wreck the economy and intimidate the public of Northern Ireland, the then Labour prime minister Harold Wilson asked: “Who do these people think they are?”

He went further, saying they were 'sponging' off the British taxpayer. Wilson’s words didn’t de-escalate the violence or the political temperature.

Loyalists, of course, are at it again. Ostensibly over concerns about the Northern Ireland Protocol but increasingly it would appear that their real beef is with power-sharing. Power-sharing only seems to work for political unionism when they hold an illusory form of control in the shape of the office of first minister.

Pundits and commentators may as well talk to the wall as try to explain that our Executive Office is a joint one. Equal. Co-joined. As the song goes “You can’t have one without the other”.

The NI Protocol is the most protracted red herring in the history of Anglo-Irish politics. And that’s saying something. A solution to the protocol will be found by the EU and the UK government. Everyone else should butt out.

The day after an agreement is reached, the sun will rise over Northern Ireland very much like it did today. As it does every day. The constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the UK will remain the same. Its future is in the hands of its own people. No-one else. There is no legislation which can wholly cover how political unionism feels on any given morning.

Put simply they will have to get over it or live with it.

Chris Heaton-Harris, secretary of state and would-be John Wayne of British politics, has slammed the Northern Ireland overspend of £650million by blaming executive parties in charge at Stormont. Like Wilson, he may have a point.

And he may as well have accused them too of 'sponging' off the British Exchequer. After all, local ministers were responsible for the economic competency of their own departments and some may have been calamitous.

Technically speaking, Northern Ireland does receive more financial spend per capita from central government than other UK regions. However, much of that money is about keeping things ticking over. It is about staying afloat.

There are no major capital expenditures nor are there specific injections of cash in order to deal with historical underfunding - particularly with infrastructure in Northern Ireland.

Following the secretary of state’s budget statement, bizarrely, Stephen Farry of Alliance says: “We should have been fixing the roof when the sun was shining”. Perhaps the sun was shining a little brighter on the North Down Gold Coast during the nine years of Tory austerity policies but it sure as hell wasn’t in other areas of Northern Ireland.

Nurses, postmen, council employees, domiciliary care workers and teachers all faced real-time cuts in their standards of living. Mr Farry’s ‘voodoo’ economic analysis will be music to the ears of Heaton-Harris and the Tories.

Farry needs to get real. Nothing, nada, trickled down from the Conservative Westminster coffers to the least well paid in society. The roof has well and truly collapsed for them.

Heaton-Harris would do well to focus on sorting out the collapsing health service in Northern Ireland. It’s providing a level of care he wouldn’t accept for his own constituents.

Northern Ireland health and social care is simply not working effectively or efficiently. In fact, it’s failing. Failing its own standards. Failing its own staff and most of all failing patients

There is a clear shortage of staff at all levels. Local GP services are erratic. There is a whole scale misunderstanding within the wider community about hospital Emergency Departments. The clue is in the name - emergencies.

Heaton-Harris and his two accomplices at the NIO are now responsible for the orderly running of Northern Ireland. It’s not a desirable situation. But rather than threatening big stick measures to politicians, they should be listening to the people.

A listening Tory? Don’t hold your breath.