Stormont election is called: Play with fire and you’ll get burnt
That dangerous uncertainty was recognised by Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan, when he suggested yesterday, that a new election is unlikely to lead to any significant change in the relative strengths or the relationships between the North’s political parties. An inconclusive election will exacerbate rather than resolve matters.
This is especially likely if the Democratic Unionist Party continues to offer cover to its discredited, arrogant leader Arlene Foster. Her lack of humility stands in stark contrast to the understanding shown by her predecessors — Peter Robinson and Ian Paisley — who knew compromise was often unavoidable. Indeed, it is fair to say that Stormont is suspended because of Ms Foster’s never-never-never personality, one unable to recognise the nuances needed when walking on such a high wire. The DUP do her, themselves or the society they purport to serve, no favours by pretending that her behaviour can be defended.
Mr Brokenshire’s announcement brought to an end 10 years of power-sharing that, even if it did not always run smoothly, it represented an almost unprecedented level of optimism in the administration of that divided society. Power-sharing was not easily secured and when, in 2006 Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, with Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair in their role as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, faced the cameras at Stormont, it was hard to believe that the arrangement would survive challenge after challenge and last for a decade. For those, whose lives had been diminished by the terrorism, it was a seminal moment, brought to life by a real sense of possibility, a sense that has, by and large, been justified. Relationships on this island, and between these islands, have reached a new level over the last 10 years and a stable, functioning Stormont validated by power-sharing has played a part in that welcome evolution.
The fraught situation is complicated as Britain will trigger Article 50 formalising their intention to quit the EU within weeks of the election. That line-in-the-sand may see a hard border on this island. Such an eventuality — no-one has been able to explain how it might be avoided — and a Stormont unable to form a stable government suggest a back-to-the-future nightmare straight out of the 1970s or 1980s.
Anyone who forgets — or chooses to forget — or anyone too young to have seen the savagery set loose by the extremists of both persuasions need only consider the papers released from the National Military Archives in recent days. They reveal that the army was, just 30 years ago, preparing for the possibility that they might be asked invade Northern Ireland should Nationalists face escalated persecution. Those state papers from 1986 also indicate British officials believed the declaration of an independent state by unionists an eminent possibility. Set against this background the DUP intransigence seems deliberately divisive and dangerously naive. The dying embers have been stirred and must be contained.
