In one of the grand corridors leading off the Great Hall in Parliament Buildings at Stormont, there is a cafe, a gift shop and an exhibition on the history of government in Northern Ireland.
One timely display deals with the fall of its parliament – not in 2022, but 50 years earlier, in 1972, when, amid spiralling violence, the unionist-dominated administration at Stormont was replaced by direct rule from Westminster.
The panel explains how in that first Stormont parliament, “the divisions between unionism and nationalism remained a constant tension”; these divisions, it notes, “continue to influence differing perspectives” to this day.
For further illustration, the visitor need only walk the hundred yards or so to the Great Hall, which on Thursday played host to plenty of tension.
As the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, flanked by his phalanx of MLAs, explained to the media why his party was not going back into the Assembly, behind him Sinn Féin’s MLAs, headed by Michelle O’Neill, swept down the staircase and into the chamber.
In too went Alliance, the UUP, SDLP and the smaller parties, including the “one-seat wonder”, as the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader, Jim Allister, was dubbed by Alliance leader Naomi Long during the recall debate.
The success of Alliance in particular at the last election in May – when it more than doubled its representation to 17 seats – was heralded as an indicator of how Northern Ireland has changed; so too was the success of Sinn Féin, which took the largest number of seats and the position of first minister, the first time in the North’s history that a nationalist party had done so.
Stormont suspension
So far, so different to Northern Ireland of 1972; yet for all that, there seems no end in sight to this latest lengthy period of Stormont suspension. The prospect instead is of an election which the northern secretary is now under a legal duty to call, but which the consensus is would only reinforce the stalemate.
Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, has done the sums; since their formation, the power-sharing institutions have been out of operation nearly 37 per cent of the time.
“The most recent five years – at 46 per cent of the time suspended – have been almost as bad as the first five years, at 49 per cent missing in action,” says Tonge, “when instability might fully have been expected given what NI was emerging from.”
By this calculation, therefore, little has changed; in fact, it can be argued there is far less excuse almost 25 years on from that violence.
Part of the difficulty lies in the way the North’s institutions operate. Set up to facilitate the sharing of power between unionist and nationalist politicians – and to ensure minority rights are protected – significant or controversial decisions require majority consent from both communities.
This includes the election of a speaker, on which all else depends; hence the DUP has been able to block the formation of the Assembly and the Executive because, as the largest unionist party, without it the requirement for cross-community support is not met, and the stalemate continues.
The argument which has been increasingly made – not least by the Alliance party, which does not designate as unionist or nationalist and therefore effectively does not count in such a scenario – that this orange/green split is outdated and the Assembly must be reformed, both to reflect the changed make-up of Northern Ireland’s politics and to prevent a single party – such as the DUP – from holding the others hostage.
Yet, for now, Northern Ireland appears destined to plod towards the polls and at least another six weeks in which it not only has no government but no ministers to take decisions on the things that matter to people – the health service, schools, roads.
An election would “change very little in terms of seats”, says Andree Murphy, columnist with the Andersonstown News. “I think there’s less energy, I think people are really annoyed and fed up but not in that it would energise them to go the polls. I think they have become quite apathetic.
‘This place isn’t working’
“People are just feeling like this place isn’t working. People need to feel their vote will make a difference.”
However, this could easily change “if the DUP do or say something that motivates people to go to the polls to give them a bloody nose”, as in May when it refused to confirm it would go into government alongside a Sinn Féin first minister.
Referring to another such moment – the then DUP first minister Arlene Foster’s “crocodile” remark in relation to Sinn Féin’s demand for an Irish language – Murphy emphasises that “by December, you’re going to see things very tight for people.
“I think the crocodiles are going to come in different forms – in terms of nurses being on strike, cold weather and people being really up against it going into Christmas and having no money.”
The trend to watch, she says, would be whether “nationalists vote tactically again for Alliance”. Political commentator and former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party Alex Kane says that among unionism he would expect the UUP and TUV votes to decline. “Voting for the TUV serves no purpose, they had their moment, and they didn’t make their breakthrough.
“I think the DUP will build its vote base – whether that will lead to new seats is a slightly different matter, but I think Jeffrey Donaldson will be in a position to say, if we have an election in seven weeks’ time, I have increased my mandate.”
Alliance’s recent growth, says Prof Peter Shirlow, from the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, has been based on “frustration with constitutional politics and Stormont’s collapses but it is also centred on the rise of those who are less committed to the dreariness and inflexibility of identity politics.
“We could assume they will hold if not grow… their nearest rivals in the UUP and SDLP may lose voters to the DUP and Sinn Féin respectively, given we are about to enter an even-more-than-usual sectarian headcount-style election.”
It is no wonder, then, that there has already been talk of alternatives, from joint authority to “no return to the joint-rule arrangements of the past”; there was also, concerningly, a warning from loyalist groups that any attempt to impose joint authority would have “dire consequences”, illustrating, not that Northern Ireland needs any reminder, what can happen in a political vacuum.
“I think we are reaching that existential moment when everybody – not just not the local parties and the electorate, but the British and Irish governments and the Americans and everyone else – concludes this is not going to work, this can’t work,” says Kane.
“If they haven’t got the Assembly up and running for the 25th anniversary, having not had it for the 20th anniversary, how long do you go on?”
In its just over 100 years of history, Northern Ireland has seen partition, parliament, direct rule and then devolution; that other options are now being discussed, he says, “suggests to me that there are people now looking at an endgame which doesn’t include the Assembly”.
