Politicians in Stormont are variously industrious, would-be pragmatic and blinkered. None of them can now legislate for those who elected them, a humiliating position.
The DUP has boycotted formation of an executive for a year as well as sittings of the legislative assembly, their declared intent to pressure the British government over the Northern Ireland protocol. Stormont as their only lever has been rendered powerless almost incidentally. There has also been a failure of collective action to demand an end to the blocking power of a single party, a provision originally meant to protect minorities.
On Tuesday, the DUP thwarted an Assembly sitting that could have enacted an opt-out organ donation system. The campaign for “Dáithí's Law”, named after six-year-old Dáithí Mac Gabhann who is in need of a heart replacement, now depends on Westminster action and MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, cites Westminster sovereignty in his own defence.
After blatantíly trying to shame Donaldson’s party into Stormont, the UK Northern Ireland secretary of state Chris Heaton-Harris is introducing a Bill to delay the obligation to hold an Assembly election in the event of an Executive not being formed until next January.
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This lacuna has consequences. Lack of an Executive is holding up the introduction of HPV testing, as Dr Gabriel Scally asserted this week, along with upgraded bowel screening. The main parties have repeatedly ducked healthcare restructuring recommended eight years ago, fearing reaction to the diminution of local hospitals. The SDLP and Sinn Féin, loud in criticism of the DUP boycott, also protest against relocation of emergency and other services. Northern Ireland has the longest treatment queues in the UK.
When the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP shared power at Stormont it was uneasy. Once the DUP and Sinn Féin displaced the more moderate parties, unease became turbulence, spiking as Sinn Féin’s emerged as the largest party last year. Playing second fiddle to a Sinn Féin first minister is the opposite of an incentive to return for unionism, arguably hardening established distaste for devolution whose price is power-sharing.
Stormont has provided a political class with focus, status of a kind and funding but has been out of action for a third of its existence. Sinn Féin brought it down over the scandal of the DUP-led Renewable Heating Incentive, the hiatus lengthening after the DUP baulked at Irish-language legislation. Brexit, whose proponents had little concern for Ireland, created a further major issue for northern communities to divide on.
Unless the present absence is solved speedily – an unlikely outcome – it will almost certainly increase the already sizeable proportion who do not vote.