Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

It's almost two months since our last podcast and the time since then has been dominated by Covid-19. At the start of the crisis, Northern Ireland's health service was in an unenviable position. The NHS has performed with distinction nevertheless, coping with the disease and saving lives, but when coronavirus moves into the background, its underlying problems - decades of delayed reforms and mounting waiting lists - will remain. We ask how the power-sharing executive is likely to cope with these challenges, in light of some of the dividing lines that have emerged again as we try to restart the economy and move out of lockdown. And we look at its chances of putting together a budget, given the main parties' preference for making crowd-pleasing announcements and funding pet-projects. You can download the episode from Podbean here . We're also available at Spotify , iTunes And at Pocket Casts .

The coronavirus crisis hit Northern Ireland properly just as Sir Patrick Coghlin published his report into the RHI scandal. This was an unfortunate coincidence, at a time when people were looking for the parties at Stormont to work effectively together and set aside their differences for the common good. At The Critic , I examined the problems exposed in the report in detail. A malfunctioning civil service, a lack of political expertise, but, most pervasively, a cavalier attitude to public money, so long as it was believed to be coming from Westminster. The Executive has traditionally used devolved government to extract every last penny from the Treasury, then divvy it up, rather than taking on the difficult work of reforming services. As The Dissenter argues on his blog , ministers were busy finding money for their political hobby horses, while much needed ICU units were left unfinished. The rapid spread of Covid-19 has brought a new-found seriousness to the work of most members...

William Murphy [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)] There was an unprecedented reaction when Julian Smith was replaced as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by Brandon Lewis. On social media in particular, it seemed like the entire province was gnashing its teeth and rending its garments. But, what did the outgoing minister really achieve? He got the Assembly back up and running, partly because Sinn Fein and the DUP were desperate to avoid an election and partly thanks to some trickery during negotiations. During those talks, he comprehensively trashed the three-stranded approach, that prevents the Republic of Ireland government from interfering in Northern Ireland's affairs. There are already signs that the new power-sharing Executive is wobbling. The parties are unhappy with funding, as ever, and there's little reason to believe they're ready to take a fresh, responsible attitude to the public finances. So far, there have been plent...

William Murphy [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)] In the latest PoliticalOD podcast, we ask whether the New Decade, New Approach document really promises a new dawn at Stormont. A wave of optimism accompanied the deal - anything to get the institutions back together - but already, as I pointed out at CapX , the atmosphere is beginning to sour. An unseemly wrangle over money has broken out, as the parties struggle to explain how they'll pay for a wishlist of new commitments. As ever, their answer is that the Treasury should stump up the cash, but there is an atmosphere of wariness in London about funding Northern Ireland even more lavishly, thanks to the RHI inquiry's revelations. David and I examine more of the agreement's pitfalls. It was published in a way that flouted Strand 1 of the Belfast Agreement, it leaves key issues cloaked in ambiguity and it fails to address the structural frailties that cause Stormont to crash repeatedly. I wro...

This article appeared first in the News Letter's General election supplement (1 June 2017). Since devolution, and particularly after the restoration of the Assembly in 2007, the centre of gravity in Northern Ireland politics moved steadily away from Westminster back to Stormont.  The tendency was compounded after pressure to stop ‘double jobbing’ eventually put an end to dual mandates, so political heavyweights and party leaders could no longer juggle their responsibilities in both legislatures.   For a number of years, the most high profile political personalities in the media have operated from Stormont, while some MPs became relatively anonymous.  There were even occasional suggestions that difficult characters or party rivals were sent to the House of Commons to keep them out of mischief.   With this General Election, there is a very good chance that the political balance will shift back toward Westminster.  Many of the most urgent challenges No...

This article appeared first in the News Letter . When should we admit that devolution in Northern Ireland has so far been a dismal failure?    Even when the power-sharing Executive operated, it rarely legislated and refused to tackle the most pressing problems afflicting our society and economy.   Twenty years after the IRA renewed its ceasefire, is it still enough that bombs don’t explode regularly on our streets?   Maybe the latest political crisis should be the point at which we finally insist upon a system of government that gets things done. The Good Friday Agreement launched a process intended to build a peaceful and successful Northern Ireland.  The institutions it established were supposed to develop into a functioning local government, capable of taking decisions about health, education, the budget and other aspects of policy that comprise ‘normal politics’. Perhaps even more importantly, power-sharing was supposed to create a ‘share...

For someone who wants Northern Ireland to work properly, particularly if he or she believes that can happen only within the United Kingdom, assessing the Assembly election result s feels rather like picking through a car crash.  It was clear enough that an unnecessary, divisive campaign would end badly, but the extent of the damage was perhaps unexpected. The significance of unionism losing its majority at Stormont is less about the constitutional question and more about parties that have lost touch with potential voters and broader changes in society.  After all, while the campaign was ongoing, it was commonplace to hear that the border was not an issue at this election, whereas some of the same commentators now insist that Brexit and DUP incivility have reignited popular demands for a united Ireland. There’s no compelling evidence that the new composition of the Assembly reflects a widespread desire to revisit the border question.  Any constitutional uncertai...

This article appeared originally in the News Letter , 12 January 2016. The Renewable Heat Incentive is the superficial reason that there will almost certainly be an early election in Northern Ireland, less than a year after the last poll.  The deeper cause is a broken political system that entrenches sectarian headcounts and encourages parties to provoke endless mini crises, when they don’t get their way.   Politics at Stormont is stuck in a repeating loop, where periods of inactive stability are followed by tantrums, emergency talks and ambiguous, meaningless ‘agreements’ that promise things will be sorted out properly later.  So far, this pattern has allowed the power-sharing institutions to lurch on unsteadily, but, until it is broken, people here have few prospects of competent government, a thriving economy or a harmonious society. In a normal political system, an election would allow the public to hold its political leaders to account and, potentially, vote a new ...

" Martin McGuinness 2009 " by Jaqian - Own work . Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons . The threat of Martin McGuinness as First Minister has trapped unionists in a self-destructive cycle. The news from Stormont in 2015 was dominated by the DUP and Sinn Féin finally cobbling together a deal, but in 2016 preparations begin for an Assembly election.  The two parties concentrated on attacking their smaller rivals, after the announcement of the ‘Fresh Start’ document.   They talk up their shared achievements and claim they’ve taken hard decisions in order to make progress for people in Northern Ireland.   However, the spirit of cooperation is unlikely to last very long, before we’re plunged into another bitter campaign, which will revolve around whether Sinn Féin becomes the largest party in the Assembly. The threat of Martin McGuinness as Northern Ireland’s First Minister remains the Democratic Unionists’ electoral ‘trump card’.  Af...

“Well, that escalated quickly”, as people on social media are wont to say.  One moment, the rhetoric around Stormont’s latest crisis was predictable and tired, the next, Mike Nesbitt announced his Ulster Unionist party was set to pull out of the executive.  The UUP’s decision put their Democratic Unionist rivals under pressure to withdraw from government as well and collapse Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions, nine months before the next scheduled Assembly election.  Initially, the DUP responded through its North Belfast MP and deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, who said it would seek to exclude Sinn Féin from the executive, if the republican party did not “deal with the issue” of PIRA members murdering Kevin McGuigan.  The DUP, Dodds asserted, was prepared to bring down the administration at Stormont “very speedily”, if the “issue” was not “dealt with”, or Sinn Féin’s ministers excluded.  The exact meaning of that bluster, you will have noticed, was ...

A rather hectic week last week prevented me from commenting on the UUP’s nightmare start to the election campaign.  When Thursday started with high profile stories of a sex scandal and a resignation splashed across the newspapers Tom Elliott could hardly have expected the day to get worse.  Cometh the hour, cometh McNarry, who decided to tear into Basil McCrea and John McCallister, live on the Nolan Show. The pair had deviated from their leader’s view on Martin McGuinness and the First Minister’s position.  In league with North Belfast MLA, Fred Cobain, Elliott suggested to Liam Clarke that the UUP might form a single Assembly group with the DUP, after the election, in order to prevent Sinn Féin taking the top spot.  It was, he assured us, both possible and legal.  McCrea and McCallister begged to differ, insisting that unionists should simply accept the result of the election. It’s quite a merry-go-round for the Ulster Unionists.  The leader surprises...

Another note to point you in the direction of an article published elsewhere.  In this month's AgendaNI magazine I sum up the debate around an opposition in the Assembly.

Sorry for the slow blogging this week.  Part of the reason was a trip to watch Liverpool succumb to FC Braga in the Europa League.  Anything must be cheerier than that, even Northern Ireland politics, and in that spirit I direct you toward my piece in Wednesday's Belfast Telegraph .  I argue that, with de facto opposition developing at Stormont, sooner or later the institutions will have to change. The contours of an opposition to the de facto coalition between Sinn Fein and the DUP are already taking shape.  Outside Stormont the two larger parties pose as the bitterest of enemies, but in the Assembly chamber and around the Executive table they often act as one. During the Budget debate MLA after MLA rose to chastise the SDLP or accuse the UUP of complicity in "Tory cuts". The only way to tell Sinn Fein from DUP was the "cúpla focal" of Irish deployed by the Shinners.   Across the Assembly the smaller parties looked embattled, huddling together agai...