Opinion

Newton Emerson: Bertie Ahern reopens debate on prospect of Stormont moving towards voluntary coalition

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Newton Emerson
Newton Emerson Newton Emerson

Of all the surviving retirees from the top of peace process politics, former taoiseach Bertie Ahern is by far the most interesting.

Last week, Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív said Ahern should head the Irish government’s new ‘shared island unit’, due to his ability to engage with “hardline unionism - if you want to call it that”.

Ó Cuív was sacked from Fianna Fáil’s front bench in 2018 for being a hardline republican, if you want to call it that.

Ahern’s comments this week that Stormont will evolve towards voluntary coalition might be seen as more unionist engagement.

There is a widespread assumption that voluntary coalition would involve unionists excluding Sinn Féin.

Beneath that is a deeper republican objection to ‘normal politics’ implying Northern Ireland is normal: Ahern used the term “normal” in his interview, with BBC Radio Ulster.

The recent three-year collapse of Stormont entrenched a DUP view that one party, by which it meant Sinn Féin, should not be able to veto devolution.

Almost every other party at Stormont is exasperated by republican exceptionalism, as the IRA funeral row revealed.

The three smaller executive parties broadly agree that what the SDLP calls the “ugly scaffolding” of power-sharing should eventually come down. The British and Irish governments always assumed this would happen - and quickly.

Review mechanisms to enable it were built into the first stages of the Good Friday Agreement.

Two decades on, there is a countervailing case that mandatory coalition has become Northern Ireland’s normal, with evolution taking it in a unique and valid direction.

A striking aspect of the funeral row was that Stormont was considered completely safe from collapse.

In part this was thanks to more scaffolding added by January’s New Decade, New Approach deal. If one of the two main parties walks out, the rest of the executive now remains in office for six months, rather than seven days.

It is difficult to imagine a scenario where it would suit Sinn Féin or the DUP to stomp away for half a year and leave everyone else to get on without them, side-lining whatever issues had caused the initial argument. Even RHI would not have sustained sufficient public outrage, unless the DUP had been dumb enough to keep provoking it. The welfare reform crisis from 2012 to 2015 is a possible example where republicans might have been tempted to step away from difficult decisions. However, they would have wanted to step back again afterwards and the cynicism of this tactic would be laughably obvious.

As in the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, which Ahern negotiated, a tweak to the rules has had profound consequences. Mandatory coalition has become, in effect, more mandatory - and more stable for it.

A logical next step might be to let one of the two main parties walk out while keeping the rest of the executive in office until the next scheduled election.

The DUP proposed this during the last collapse but Sinn Féin dismissed the idea out of hand, spying a trap to exclude it.

In fact, the trap would snare everyone: under such a rule change, both main parties would be motivated to try antagonising each other into walking out, which of course would be highly unstable. Stormont’s new provision for a six-month huff may well be an optimal arrangement.

The smaller executive parties have all had the option since 2016 to enter official opposition at any time. This emerging voluntary aspect of coalition is a safer point of pressure on the big two. In January, Sinn Féin and the DUP insisted on all eligible parties joining them in power, as they dislike being in office without political cover from their own ‘side’. The threat of that cover being withdrawn can always be held over them and it can evolve in potentially ground-breaking ways, accommodating the growth of Alliance or coordination between the SDLP and UUP.

In his BBC interview, Ahern suggested Stormont would evolve towards voluntary coalition because new voters will demand more left-wing and green policies, rendering it “almost impossible to have a collective leadership.”

Even if this prediction of voting trends is correct, the conclusion does not follow.

Across the democratic world, coalition systems routinely include left and green parties alongside conservative, right-wing and nationalist parties - as Fianna Fáil is demonstrating in Dublin.

A coalition of two rival nationalisms is a problem on a different scale. Having managed it on and off for 22 years, Stormont is not that badly adapted to its environment.