LAST UPDATE | 28 Oct 2022
I TWEETED ON Thursday that it was not a big day for Northern Ireland politics. But that it was a day like too many others.
And I asked a couple of questions:
Would it really be progress if the Executive was restored?
And, would voting in another Assembly election change anything?
I came to the conclusion that we were watching the continuation of a Stormont s***show.
This is the news from the North.
The same sorry story of a place that just can’t function.
We are waiting now for details from Northern Ireland Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris – a date for another election, just months after the last one.
After another period in limbo, Thursday was Stormont’s last chance to get an Executive in place.
In a long row over the post-Brexit Irish sea border, the DUP has been refusing to nominate for deputy First Minister.
The election in May ended its long run as top party.
In the way our politics works and doesn’t work, without a deputy First Minister, there can’t be a First Minister.
Stormont has now run out of road.
In the political script, the line from Heaton-Harris has been consistent. If no Executive, there would be an election.
But an election to what? Will it simply send the parties back into the same mess and standoff?
One MLA told me that it would make things worse – “more difficult to recover”.
Another spoke of “madness”.
There has been thinking out and talking out on an enhanced role for Dublin in the decision-making of this place.
And so the script becomes more nervous – more uncertain. More angry.
In this post-Brexit period, old certainties have been shattered.
In all the noise of now, it is worth remembering that in January 2020, then Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith could not have saved Stormont without the help of Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney.
Not joint-authority or joint-rule, but the two governments finding ways to make this place function – joint-working, I suppose.
My very clear view is that agreement should have represented Stormont’s last chance. That if it failed again, then it should fail forever.
But here we are again – repeating the madness.
Why are we here?
Post-Brexit
It is all part of the post-Brexit turmoil in Britain and in the North. An unthinking project. Badly negotiated. And, now, it is everyone else’s fault. Today’s anger is a continuation of the blame game.
For many – indeed for most – there are more pressing issues in the here-and-now; the cost-of-living crisis and all the associated worries about heat, food, mortgages, and with Christmas not far away.
There is a bad mood. Politics is in a bad place. The wrong place.
My questions are the same.
Would it really represent progress if the Executive was restored?
Would voting in another Assembly election change anything?
There has to be a plan. Something different, or a full stop.
Stormont has had too many chances.
If it can’t work, won’t work, then – what next?
What will the governments do?
Brian Rowan is a former BBC correspondent in Belfast and an author on the peace process. His latest book Living with Ghosts was recently published by Merrion Press.
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