I WAS over in Northern Ireland last week. Up on the north coast with my mum. Did all the things you’d expect. Visited family, went out for dinner, had a mooch around the shops, drove around the coast, sat in cafes (if you’re ever in Ballycastle you should visit Thyme & Co) and generally had a good time. I didn’t go to see Dennis Taylor and Ken Doherty put on an exhibition snooker match in the local theatre but I could have if I’d wanted.
In short, I was reminded that life was sailing blithely on in a country without a functioning government. Given that the Assembly at Stormont has been suspended for more than a third of its lifespan since it was established in 1998 I guess Northern Irish life is used to it by now.
Stormont hasn’t sat since last May’s election which saw Sinn Fein emerge as the largest party for the first time. The Democratic Unionist Party’s insistence that it wouldn’t nominate a Deputy First Minister until the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol was dealt with ensured that there would be no return to power-sharing. Last week the deadline for forming an executive passed. Legally a new election is required. It’s a mess.
So, in the circumstances, it’s really quite impressive that the UK Government has managed to make things worse.
After a last-minute attempt to elect a speaker last Thursday inevitably failed, the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris held a press conference on the streets of Belfast the next day where he announced, despite repeated pledges that he would call another election, that, actually, he wouldn’t be calling an election straight away. Instead, he was going to have talks with Northern Ireland’s political parties. The same political parties he’d been having talks with a couple of days before.
“Panto Season” was the Belfast Telegraph’s splash on Saturday as all sides of the political divide united for a pile-on. “A bizarre U-turn,” Sinn Fein said of the announcement. “The chaos continues,” Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader suggested (let’s set aside the fact that the DUP has contributed more than its fair share to that chaos in the last six months).
Presumably the Secretary of State was simply carrying out the wishes of the latest Prime Minister (we have had three of them in the last couple of months to be fair). But it did make him look foolish.
It’s possible, of course, that Heaton-Harris recognises that another election is not going to help. The DUP’s hardline position seems to be popular with its core support and all another election will do is squeeze out more moderate unionists and nationalists in favour of the DUP and Sinn Fein, further entrenching the stand-off.
The truth is he has precious few options. Even so, he has played them badly.
Still, there’s one thing he could do that would be popular with most of the people I spoke to in Northern Ireland last week. He could withhold the wages of the MLAs not sitting in Stormont.
After all, if you’re not doing the job the voters elected you to do, why should you be getting paid for not doing it?
Read more by Teddy Jamieson:
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