For a qualified football referee, Chris Heaton-Harris has demonstrated a curious reluctance to blow the whistle on Stormont in his role as Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State. Contrary to his advance declaration that he would call an Assembly election as soon as the six-month deadline for forming an Executive expired last week, the Londoner scarpered to the sidelines, scoring nothing but perilous uncertainty. Into this political lacuna, the UVF and the UDA hurled an incendiary threat to return to violence should the Irish and British governments decide to jointly oversee the North’s governance during the continuing limbo. London dithers. Belfast braces itself again.
In Northern Ireland politics, precisely nothing is always the most likely thing to happen. Stalemate is the name of the game. The Belfast Agreement was signed almost a quarter of a century ago, but the powersharing Executive has been out of action for more than one-third of that time. In January 2017, Sinn Féin collapsed the administration by withdrawing from the Executive after Arlene Foster, then the DUP leader and Northern Ireland’s First Minister, refused to stand aside pending an inquiry into the “cash-for-ash” scheme. The deadlock lasted three years.
The new Executive did not last as long. Last February, the DUP – the unionist party with the claim “democratic” in its name – pulled out of Stormont, vowing not to return until the Northern Ireland protocol to the EU-UK Brexit deal was rewritten. An election came in May propelling Sinn Féin to the top of the Assembly-seats table. Still the DUP has not budged. Meanwhile, £435 million (€498 million) remains unspent in Stormont’s purse, the 90 absent MLAs continue to receive their £55,000 salaries, and the 1.9 million people living in Northern Ireland are left to grapple with steep inflation, deteriorating public services and a volatile political vacuum.
The general expectation had been that Heaton-Harris would announce an election for December 15th. This was based on the assumption that pre-Christmas voting would be more appetising than having canvassers campaigning on the doorstep, as the turkey sizzled in the oven, for an election on January 20th, the latest possible date. Whatever date is set, is it realistic or even fair to expect voters to traipse back to the polls for another exercise in sheer futility? A repeat election will change nothing as long as the legal veto on Stormont remains in the laps of Sinn Féin and the DUP.
Under the Belfast Agreement, all MLAs must state if they are “unionist”, “nationalist” or “other”. The joint heads of the Executive are then appointed from the biggest unionist and nationalist parties. Even if they win the most seats, the “others” never get a turn**. In 1998 when the agreement was negotiated, this measure was essential to ensure against a return to unionist domination, but it was never meant to be forever, and much has changed since then. “Others” leapt into third place in Stormont’s seat rankings in the May elections when 17 of the tribe-agnostic Alliance Party’s candidates were elected. That result mirrored last year’s census when 17.4 per cent ticked the “no religion” box. There is growing resistance, especially among the post-Troubles generations, against the historical straitjacket of green-or-orange.
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Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said the governance formula is past its sell-by date. He is correct and he needs to do something about it, urgently, because a measure that was designed for planned obsolescence has become a licence for dysfunction. Instead of serving the 1.9 million people it was meant to serve, the mandatory coalition is anathema to their needs. Apart from enabling protracted instability, the requirement militates against the sort of robust opposition necessary in a parliament and creates a new second class citizenry in the North – those voters who are in effect disenfranchised because they want out of the old tribal trenches.
Twenty-five years after voters in the North endorsed the Belfast Agreement as a building block for a normalised society, it is time to strengthen the democracy it set out to achieve
At present the DUP is holding Stormont to ransom for a demand that most people in Northern Ireland do not want. A LucidTalk poll for Queens University published last week found that 53 per cent of respondents believed the Brexit protocol was beneficial to the North’s economy and 63 per cent thought it offered opportunities for business.
Sinn Féin’s argument against abolishing the mandatory coalition is that it would be a first step in dismantling the Belfast Agreement. That is an argument that exposes an absence of familiarity with the document that the party negotiated and signed, and which states that this specific element is open to revision.
Heaton-Harris, who once described himself as “fiercely Eurosceptic”, might start by listening to Martin’s argument and by standing up to the DUP*. Its leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, likes to reiterate that his party has a mandate for its boycott of the devolved institutions. That’s a somewhat positive spin on what happened in the polling stations six months ago, when the DUP lost three seats and its share of votes shrank by nearly 7 per cent.
Twenty-five years after 71 per cent of voters in the North endorsed the Belfast Agreement as a building block for a normalised society, it is time to strengthen the democracy it set out to achieve*. Rather than repeatedly giving politicians mandates to do nothing, the people ought to be trusted with their own mandate. The London government should immediately change the law requiring another pointless election by January 20th and, instead, hold an indicative referendum with a single question – do you want Stormont’s mandatory coalition to continue? A majority “no” vote would prove exceedingly awkward for Sinn Féin and the DUP in mounting their case to retain their privileged trump card.
Such a poll would give voice to the growing numbers of voters in Northern Ireland who yearn for a political administration that occupies itself with the details of their lives instead of putting them on ice whenever there is a hitch or a potential political gain is to be made.
If the best that politicians can do is to refuse to work with each other in Stormont, it’s time to let the people have their unambiguous say. That would be a powerful way to mark the agreement’s 25th anniversary next April.
*This article was amended on Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 to correct the percentage of votes cast in favour of the Belfast Agreement vote and to remove an erroneous reference to Chris Heaton-Harris apologising for dismissing Irish concerns about Brexit.
** There are some circumstances in which a party designated as “other” can nominate the First or Deputy First Minister.