THERE might have been a chink of light in the Stormont impasse on Monday when the main political parties met to discuss what a programme for government might look like if or when the institutions are restored.
Under a process set up by Jayne Brady, head of the civil service, the party leaders are to meet every two weeks and will nominate MLAs to various working groups to take forward planning for a future programme for government
The DUP was represented at the meeting by Gordon Lyons and Paul Givan. After the meeting, Givan said that it would engage constructively in working groups convened by the head of the civil service to ensure the DUP’s voice was heard in the process. He said that whilst the meetings would be of value, the blockage to real progress remained the protocol.
Legislation to give the British government cover for resiling from the protocol was introduced in Westminster on June 13 amidst a lot of fanfare about taking back control (again). Curiously it hasn’t gone anywhere since, whereas one might have reasonably expected it to progress rather quickly.
Could it be that the DUP were told that there had to be a show of good faith on their part regarding going back into Stormont before the bill moves forward, and that is why they are taking part in the pre-meetings to the meetings about the programme for government?
Givan said on Monday: “Devolution in Northern Ireland has only ever worked when there has been cross-community support and the NI Executive has functioned best with consensus politics. There has been an absolute abandonment of the principle of consensus politics in Dublin, Brussels and Belfast. We have a mandate to deal with the protocol and if there is the political will, then cross-community consensus can be restored, paving the way for re-establishment of the Assembly and Executive. That remains our goal.”
There is a certain element of the rear-view mirror conferring a rosy hue in that comment. You’d almost be forgiven for forgetting the petition of concern ever existed.
It’s also slightly confusing in that Givan is saying that Dublin, Brussels and Belfast have abandoned the principle of consensus politics. Does he mean consent? I and other columnists in this newspaper have written before about the DUP’s continual attempts to re-frame the principle of consent as set out in the Good Friday Agreement into something that it is not. Are we now to be subjected to a re-definition of consensus as well?
In the DUP’s lexicon, consent, consensus and veto may have slightly different meanings but they have the same effect, namely that the DUP cannot be seen to compromise.
The issue at Stormont has always been that the DUP have treated political progress as a zero-sum game. Equality, or that dreaded phrase ‘levelling up,’ has been branded as a concession and it is a shocking indictment of a refusal to respect the rights of others that Westminster has had to legislate for, among other things, reproductive rights and language rights.
There is a clip doing the rounds on social media and I think it’s from Newsnight during the period of time when Stormont had collapsed following the resignation of Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister. It’s worth setting it out in full.
In it, Jeffrey Donaldson says: “As a member of parliament, every day I encounter situations in my own constituency where people are losing out as a result of there not being a government in Northern Ireland and we can’t go on like this. And it is wrong in my opinion in a democracy that one party representing maybe 25% of the people is able to veto the establishment of a government. That is not democracy… we heard the question about blackmail, well it is wrong to blackmail an entire community and say you cannot have a government until we get our way. That is not the way that democracy should function… We need Stormont back up and running. We need our own government.”
The DUP has backed itself into a corner and knows Jim Allister will be snapping at its heels electorally with a more finessed and targeted campaign if we are back at the polls before Christmas.
But it will be hard for it to stay out of Stormont indefinitely if the protocol legislation isn’t progressed or isn’t passed or is watered down via amendment. Jeffrey Donaldson’s words will come back to haunt him and it will not be enough to shrug and say “sure Sinn Féin did it”.
The alternative to Stormont isn’t direct rule, it’s joint authority. Faced with that prospect, urging the British government to get back into negotiations with the EU on mitigating the negative impacts of the protocol seems like a much better idea if you are the DUP.
