The first suggestion might be to take the UUP at their word that they did not agree to the devolution of P&J for the reasons they claimed: namely that the executive is extremely dysfunctional and has no realistic ability to agree a programme for government that takes any remotely controversial decisions. There is no agreement on education which has been reduced to the state of a farce; a very black one when the fact is that it has caused confusion and despair for many parents and has resulted in children sitting more tests with less certainty than ever before. Genuinely having made such an unbelievable hash of education should the executive be given further power? Clearly much of the chaos has been driven by the ideological zealotry of Catriona Ruane but she is still there as large as life, as zealous and useless as ever. To be fair the favourite putative P&J minister, David Ford, a man lacking in any ideology it seems save that of his own self aggrandisement, presents less such problems. However, a combination of the high likelihood of P&J being led by the weakest minister (both politically and personally) in the United Kingdom and with his strings being pulled by such diametrically opposed parties as the DUP and Sinn Fein, is enough to make anyone outside the cosy cabal of Sinn Fein, the DUP and Mr. Ford uneasy.

However, whilst the UUP may have had good practical and principled reasons for opposing P&J devolution there is a significant feeling that there were also party political reasons for this recourse to principle. The UUP’s whole strategy in this may be an extension of the one I suggested some weeks ago: the Battle of the Nile strategy or that which Jim Molyneaux used relatively successfully in the 1980s and early 1990s (the incongruence of likening Nelsonian leadership to that of Emepy’s or Molyneaux’s is sufficiently amusing to bear repetition). Essentially this was (like Nelson at the Nile) to attack on both sides of one’s opponents. For the UUP the idea is to offer unionist voters a party simultaneously more liberal and yet more hard line than the DUP. Molyneaux managed this by having leading members more liberal and more hard line; simultaneously more socially and economically left and right wing than the DUP. Duncan Shipley Dalton has very correctly pointed out that this strategy fell apart when any form of active move forwards was required and was correctly called by John Hunter “Steady as she drifts” but it remains an attractive concept for the UUP.

The UUP may, in their more deluded moments, feel with their alliance with the Conservatives that they may be able to achieve the same sort of result and produce a united unionist party by destroying the DUP. The UUP have consistently been seen as more liberal than the DUP from the time of Molyneaux onwards; Trimble having rapidly abandoned the hard liners who elected him. Furthermore their alliance with the Conservatives could be seen as a further example of becoming more liberal within a Northern Ireland context. Hence, the CU tie up could be a good way to gain that mythical beast of great electoral power: the garden centre Prod. It could also appeal to that sentiment most common amongst unionists within the Pale that Northern Ireland should be and indeed is as British as, if not Finchley, at least the leafier bits of greater Birmingham. Additionally if the CU project could produce in material voting form that other fantasy creature, the Unionist Catholic then the CUs would indeed be on the way to electoral power. Hence, the CU pact has the potential to further “out left” the DUP and maybe eat into the Alliance vote.

Such a strategy, however, depends on the strength of the two righteous mythical creatures, the unicorns of unionist fantasy: the Garden centre Prod and the unionist Catholic. Unionist analysts have long disagreed regarding the existence of these beasts and indeed a number of quests over the years to find and exploit their power have ended pretty tragically for all concerned:Franklin’s lost expedition to navigate the North West passage comes to mind as an analogy.

Set against the dangers of a Franklin typed disaster there are of course other strategies to gain unionist support back to the CUs and it is in this context that the most cynical analyses of the UUP decision to oppose P&J devolution are made. It is abundantly clear that a significant segment of the DUP’s previous support is now very annoyed with their former party of choice. The double jobbing, dynasties and perception of arrogance all worked very strongly against the DUP in the European elections; now in addition Irisgate has been added to the mix. Most importantly, however, is the simple fact that many harder line unionists disapprove of the DUP’s decision to share power with Sinn Fein and in June last year took their revenge on the party by voting for Allister. It is unlikely that much of that anger will have dissipated now that the DUP have been seen to have had to accept a deal which, whatever their protestations, looks like a defeat for them.

Jim Allister and the TUV were of course the main beneficiaries of the fall in DUP support at Europe. However, the very clear voting dynamic whereby TUV supporters transferred to the CUs was present. In the Westminster election the TUV will of course not stand in every seat and in addition there are seats where the UUP were close to the DUP in votes and as such some TUVists might lend their vote to the UUP to bash the DUP. The exact extent of that (especially the latter) part of the voting dynamic is difficult to assess and may be small. However, it is at the heart of the CUs (or more exactly the UUPs) desire to “out right” the DUP and capture some TUV support.

In that context opposing the devolution of P&J makes sense and if the suggestion can be put across that the reasons for opposing P&J are politically “left” (in terms of competence and opposing a sectarian carve up) as well as “right” of the DUP then it might have been and may yet be a cleverer tactic than many of its detractors within the DUP and indeed the media have suggested. It is possible that opposing P&J might gain TUV typed support without further endangering the Franklin-esque quest for those unicorns. Media commentators (with a number of honourable exceptions) have for many years now, been very poor at assessing the voting patterns of unionists and suggesting that the UUP’s decision was so very flawed on P&J may be even more naive than those very commentators were suggesting that the UUP were.

However, although the plan may be a good one and may look like a Battle of the Nile, it could end up being more like the Lake Balaton Offensive, the last German advance of the Second World War where, desperate to regain the oil fields around the eponymous lake, the Germans made one last attack against the Russians and after a few brief gains were forced back yet again.

The reasons for such pessimism regarding the CU’s chances are not simply in the potential the P&J decision has to annoy the unicorns but probably more significantly (like the Germans at Lake Balaton) the lack of resources available to the CUs. The candidates they have are not especially convincing and as I noted previously there is an apparent disconnect in the matching of the candidate and the seat in question. This is nowhere more stark than in Upper Bann where Harry Hamilton, local candidate and no doubt all round nice guy that he is, has his work cut out trying to persuade TUV types to support him over Simpson; even more so if the TUV do not run.

The problem for the CUs is their lack of talent and almost complete absence of strength in depth: a problem which of course afflicts all Northern Ireland’s political parties but is particularly evident for the CUs in view of their very considerable ambition; namely to overtake once again the DUP and become the major unionist party. Ideally, should Franklin return triumphant, along with added unicorns. A further related problem for the CU’s is of course the DUP’s incumbency of the seats in question and now since Lady Hermon will not be standing in North Down for them, they have no incumbent MP. Incumbency is a major advantage, apart from where the MP in question has been a major disaster (Strangford) or has failed to really gel with the constituency (South Antrim). In all the other seats where the CUs are targeting the DUP, they are taking on an at least semi competent incumbent. North Antrim of course will not have an incumbent but there unless the CUs can resurrect Lord Carson or Viscount Craigavon, it will be a battle between Jim Allister and Ian Paisley junior and the lack of a current MP is most unlikely to be of any real help to the CU project. Even the most ardent CU fantasy explorer has not claimed any significant unicorn sightings up in North Antrim.

The decisions the UUP made over P&J may have been in part both principled and those of low political cunning. However, a political party should try to increase the options and electoral base open to it whilst at the same time reducing the options open to its opponents (or rivals to use Fitzjameshorse’s excellent explanation). The decision on P&J may have been lambasted by the chattering classes and those in the current cosy cabal up at Stormont. However, the lack of executive competence may play fairly well to the more moderate potential CU voters (and any unicorns out there), whilst more traditional NI political views may please the TUVists (the fantasy ogres if one wants). Hence, it is just possible that with the Conservative tie up nailing down the space to the “left” of the DUP, the opposition to P&J devolution can be utilised as a device to open up support opportunities to the DUP’s “right.”

In spite of the fact that the UUP’s decision may have been far from a bad one, the reality remains that the CUs may not do very well at this election: that probably has a great deal more to do with their inherently weak position and talent base, along with some poor candidate / seat matches than it has with the supposedly awful decision to oppose the transfer of P&J.

After the failure of the Balaton offensive, Hitler ordered that the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler remove their Adolf Hitler armbands as they had failed to fight properly. If the CU’s latest battle is a failure no doubt some will try to pass the blame for the failure to the P&J decision. It will be as nonsensical as Hitler’s hysterical order. However, when the T-34s, be they real or metaphorical, are about to overrun the bunker, rationality is often absent. Or turning back to Franklin: the main reason he failed was that he was about 100 years too early to have the necessary nuclear powered ice breakers.

“As somebody who was actually at Hatfield throughout, I can say that while one of the parties might have arrived with that agenda it was most definitely not the basis on which the Conservative Party brought the participants together.

“As we made clear at the time, the purpose was to help promote political stability and in particular explore means of overcoming the impasse on policing and justice and avoiding a collapse.

“There is only one electoral pact - between the Conservative Party and the Ulster Unionist Party.  That is what both parties are committed to making work.”

• Failure to agree candidates.

• Failure to co-ordinate policy.

• Failure to be accountable.

The Conservatives claim they are bankrolling everything but are in ” a one way marriage with nothing coming back.” Claiming they have no influence over decision -making in Ulster Unionism the Tory spokesperson said: “The Conservative party’s fear is that we will be dragged down into the gutter of tribalism instead of Northern Ireland politics being elevated onto the national stage.”

Conservatives argue they are going to end up with only one candidate out of eighteen-North Down.  “The policing and justice decision has put the relationship under strain. Conservatives do not believe Ulster Unionists were right in voting against the return of policing and justice” said a spokesperson.

East Belfast: Trevor Ringland

This may be a reasonable move in view of the high level of support Naomi Long attracts in the seat. A moderate unionist like Ringland might be expected to pick up a considerable number of Long’s normal voters keen to see someone other than Peter Robinson elected. However, that avoids the fact that with the TUV standing there is a chance that a multi way split in the unionist vote would let Alliance gain their first elected MP. Hence, Long will undoubtedly mount a major campaign and her supporters and workers will be buoyed up by the prospect of having a chance of her being elected. In that context Ringland might not get all the liberal votes he might otherwise reasonably expect.

The TUV will also of course be very keen to do well in the seat. It has some very hard line areas, a significant working class part and even many of the more affluent areas are far from liberal. In addition East Belfast is the home of the TUV’s opponent in chief Peter Robinson so they are likely to mount a major campaign and TUV supporters are unlikely to vote CU in order to knife Robinson as in a four way fight they have the possibility of victory.

All this leaves until the end the biggest issue. The biggest beast in East Belfast, arguably the biggest beast in Northern Ireland’s political landscape is Peter Robinson. He is not likely to give up without a fight and neither are his supporters nor party workers. Robinson has also emerged surprisingly little damaged from Irisgate and now very much has a point to prove. In such a context Robinson is going to be a hard man to beat whether by the CUs or by anyone else.

To be fair it is difficult to know what better candidate the CUs might have run: Empey has failed too many times against Robinson. A harder line candidate might have attracted some TUV leaning supporters though of course they will have their own candidate in what is a hard line constituency but that would have lost any Alliance support. Hence, Ringland is not a bad choice but expecting him to take the seat is probably over optimistic. However, as I always say I do not do predictions.

Strangford: Mike Nesbitt

The CUs may well see this seat as now amongst their most winnable targets and getting Mike Nesbitt as a major coup: they may be correct but again the constituency profile / candidate match is less than perfect. This seat was held by John Taylor prior to Iris Robinson’s victory and is again not an especially liberal area. Although the DUP are undoubtedly more bruised here than in any other seat in Northern Ireland they still have a number of decent local representatives whom they can move up to fight the Westminster seat. Again Nesbitt is not an especially enticing prospect for TUV voters who have their own candidate in Terry Williams and again must fancy their chances of an upset here. Nesbitt’s comments about Patricia MacBride’s brother and his possible initial support for Eames Bradley’s £12,000 are unlikely to endear him to TUV, DUP (or even some UUP) voters. Another major problem is the perception, however unjustified, that Nesbitt is a late convert to unionism and is a serial job leaver who finishes little that he has started but is out for the next interesting experience and tick in his personal list of “been there done that.”

Despite all that Strangford may well offer the CUs one of their best chances of a gain at Westminster but it might have been better to have chosen a more straightforward candidate for Strangford and run Nesbitt in the likes of South Belfast. In addition even if Mike Nesbitt is elected for them it could all yet turn to tears for the CUs in Strangford.

Lagan Valley: Daphne Trimble

This again looks like a remarkably bad decision. Jeffrey Donaldson is extremely well dug in here and short of some disaster which is as yet unforeseen he will remain the one to beat. Donaldson may be a political lightweight, may be prone to making foolish gaffes (such as that retention of the Full Time Reserve was a precondition for P&J devolution) and is clearly a bit too fond of blockbuster movies. However, he remains an overwhelmingly hard working and a popular constituency MP. Against him the TUV have put forward what must be their best candidate after Jim Allister. Keith Harbinson has proved a good campaigner and candidate and has a profile although far from huge, better than most TUV hopefuls.

Against this popular sitting MP and a good TUV candidate the CUs have decided to put Daphne Trimble. Mrs. Trimble is not known for much in the way of her political profile positive or negative but comes encumbered with the baggage of being the wife of the man who practically single handedly destroyed the party he inherited from Jim Molyneaux (once MP for Lagan Valley). Hence, Mrs. Trimble starts in an already difficult seat with additional handicaps albeit not entirely of her own making. The CUs may have calculated that they could not win this seat and so allowed Daphne to have a go but that also has dangers. The Trimble name anywhere on a CU ballot paper conjures up thoughts of abject failure; of endless lines in the sand meekly yet gracelessly surrendered and of an election campaign (2005) with that unforgettable line “Decent People vote Unionist” which if the Labour Party’s 1983 election manifesto was the longest suicide note in British political history, that UUP effort was a short snappy bullet to the brain. To allow the name that dare not speak its name (Trimble) to be uttered in this CU election is foolhardy. It reminds garden centre unionists and any Catholic unionists of what they used to dislike about the UUP (dancing down the Garvaghy Road); hard line unionists of a Lundy worse than the erstwhile governor of Londonderry himself and old fashioned UUP types of a period in their history they would rather forget.

Upper Bann: Harry Hamilton

This seat brings us to one of the worst of the CU’s errors and a demonstration of why if they do well at these elections it will truly be because of the victories won for them by the successes of the TUV and the errors of the DUP. Of all the constituencies with CU candidates announced this is arguably the most winnable. David Simpson’s grip on the seat is far from secure: it has always had a significant level of UUP support; even Trimble did not lose by that much in 2005 and there are still 2 UUP to 2 DUP MLAs.

However, this seat was once the stomping ground of Harold McCusker, a hard liner within the UUP and elected David Trimble in the pre Lundification days when he too was a hard line unionist. In contrast whilst Harry Hamilton is no doubt a likeable and competent person, even within current CU circles he is not regarded as particularly hard line. If Hamilton is to win this seat he needs to attract harder line support, something he is poorly equipped to do. In addition if the TUV do not stand (I have no inside information) he will need to appeal to their supporters to win and annoyed by David Simpson as TUVists may be they are likely to have limited enthusiasm to turn out to vote for the Freddie Mercury impersonator. The CUs can take little comfort from the Waringstown by election as that was in a middle class and (by Upper Bann standards) liberal part of the constituency in which the DUP did not stand and the TUV candidate was possibly less than perfect: hence, extrapolation is utterly meaningless

The folly of the CUs in picking Hamilton is magnified when one considers that one of, if not their most formidable politician: Danny Kennedy, is pointlessly being run in neighbouring Newry and Armagh. It is unclear whether or not Kennedy insisted on this but had anyone with tactical cunning been in charge in CU high command he should have been forced to run in Upper Bann. In the current circumstances whether the TUV run or not Simpson would have been packing his bags already had he been facing Kennedy. Instead although the seat is not yet lost for the CUs they are insisting on making it much more difficult and depriving a politician who might realistically have made it to a Conservative government of a chance of achieving his national potential.

It may be that the CUs will produce some more sensible decisions in the remaining seats which have yet to be announced. It may also be that such is the crisis within the DUP that the CUs can yet take some of the seats I have mentioned especially Strangford. However, the decisions made thus far in each of the winnable seats are extremely dubious and imply that the CUs have learnt little about the electoral landscape since they were unceremoniously destroyed in 2005. That they still have any chance is due to the hole the DUP have excavated for themselves. Like the French in the Second World War if the CUs come out of this as victors they must thank themselves less than almost all the other participants. Currently their tactics call to mind the brilliance of the Maginot Line.

1. Announcing an election over the weekend would sabotage the passage of key pieces of Government legislation including Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill; the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill which includes provisions to set up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and for a referendum on electoral reform; and the Child Poverty Bill which will entrench in law the Government’s commitment to eradicating child poverty by 2020.

2. The Labour party is carrying on as normal. This weekend they’re launching a clever social media tool called “Take a Long Hard Look at the Tories“. It’s the kind of thing that will excite Labour’s netroots and twitterati but is hardly election campaign launch material.

3. Council elections in London, all the metropolitan boroughs, and some unitary authorities will take place on May 6th regardless. Labour is hoping to win back many of the seats they lost in 2006 with the election increasing the turnout. The party would also struggle to fight two elections in six weeks.

4. Calling a March 25th election would result in criticism that Labour had avoided either both holding a Budget and facing the Q1 growth figures which come out in late April.

5. The Tories have been trying to stir it up. As well as Iain Dale’s intervention, Sam Coates from Tory social media team tweeted at lunch “The parliamentary rules on what happens when the election is called, if you’re interested: http://j.mp/aLzAzc”

Although Will also says he could be wrong, this has the look and feel of a Tory spin operation… More locally, if an election is called now, at least the UUP has finally got down to choosing its candidates… The SDLP on the other hand have no named candidate in sight for South Down… A situation ripe for a nice piece of disruption from a better organised Sinn Fein…

Also from the printed Observer article

The RSF president said its activists would assist nationalist residents who wanted to oppose any moves to allow Orange or loyalist marches to pass through their areas as a concession to the DUP. One of the key elements of the deal hammered out between Sinn Féin and teh DUP was that a new mechanism of local community forums would be established to rule on contentious marches, rather than the parades commission.

“Republican Sinn Féin will not abandon these communities to any squalid deal reached at Stormont or Hillsborough Castle,” Dalton said.

Against this background what will the DUP have to show for all Peter Robinson’s negotiating skills? Herein hangs the tale. The DUP has majored “on getting parading right.” The question is what does this mean ?

The existing Parades Commission is a creature of government to remove responsibility from it for having to take charge at Executive level every year regarding where people can or cannot march. In other words the Parades Commission does the government’s dirty work for it.

The government is reluctant to undo this edifice because Sinn Fein/The SDLP/the PSNI/the Police Federation/and the Policing Board all want to retain the parades commission. The DUP is pressing to put an alternative structure or structures in place.

This is a rather difficult area in which to bring comfort to the DUP apart from being awkward. It is the rock however upon which everything could perish. About one third of the DUP’s elected members want visible ‘product’ up and running to coincide with Sinn Fein’s ‘goodies’ in May.

No deal is yet complete.

The DUP is hard-balling. That party wants Sinn Fein to make a concession not stated publicly yet. Sinn Fein is no mood for reopening negotiations. They believe they have been closed. Gerry Adams is adamant that no matter what emerges Republicans will not live with Orange parades marching in catholic/nationalist areas where they are not welcome.

The Orange Order historically marched where it wanted along what it saw as ’ the Queen’s highway.’ We are all prisoners of folk memory.

One wag said of Irish history: “It is just one f…....thing after another.” Crude but accurate.

She continued:

“It exposes the inherent problems in the system of governance in the North of Ireland, the D’Hondt system, in that it rewards people from the extremes and does not reward people who bring together communities and serve all of the people within their communities. While we continue to prop up a dysfunctional system, frankly it will never work and there will be crisis after crisis.”

Collins:

That is the nub of the problem. The Belfast Agreement enshrined a dysfunctional society’s sectarian divisions into governmental institutions. To be fair, there wasn’t any obvious alternative around at the time and the hope was that normal political activity would gradually evolve as the political representatives of unionism and nationalism shared power and developed some basis of trust in each other.

Instead, however, the opposite happened as suspicions grew and festered in the years after 1998. For that, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair must take a large share of the blame. Having put an enormous amount of work into constructing the hugely complex agreement, they then proceeded to abandon the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists to appease their more extreme rivals.

Although, I think, this account exaggerates the importance of the switch in external patronage to the misfortunes of the two centre parties (they were eaten by other more internal contradictions, not least in the case of the SDLP its possibly erroneous sense of ownership of the Belfast Agreement), the addiction to it is clear enough from the way this dumb show (all picture and no sound) farce at Hillsborough played out.

As I pointed out in the Comment is Free piece yesterday, this is a piece of business OFMdFM were given extra resources to deal with. Having consumed those resources to zero effect (rent seeking behaviour par excellence), the two have drawn in Gordon Brown and the Taoiseach who has more pressing matters of national interest to attend to, after Sinn Fein insisted on externalising their domestic problems.

Judging by the lack of content in the briefings being given to the mainstream media, this has been less a matter of formal rounds of negotiation with their attendant paper trails (which at least create some cohesive sense on what has been achieved and what has not), and more in the nature of relationship management, with the main purpose of the rounds being more allowing tempers to cool rather than creating space for progress.

Collins makes this observation:

In the years after 1998, Sinn Féin perfected the art of spinning out the process time after time in order to get what it wanted, while marginalising the SDLP. It succeeded magnificently in those two objectives but the tinkering with the process became an end in itself. The party has not been nearly as successful in exercising power as it was in art of peace-processing. A byproduct of its interminable negotiating strategy was that the electorate in the Republic simply lost interest in its activities.

Another unintended consequence of its strategy has been that the DUP learned the lessons only too well and proceeded to copy the Sinn Féin tactic of putting process before real politics. Each party has got what it deserved in the other but the people who live in Northern Ireland have to put up with the consequences.

Collins, rather too darkly IHMO, concludes that cutting the whole system off might give the politicians pause for thought, and give the British and Irish governments moment to to listen to the Northern Irish people. But no democratic institution can afford to drift this far from the concerns of its people…

At some point, there may be a need to rip it up and start again…

Previously unionists have been threatened with Joint Authority, effectively co-rule by London and Dublin. It’s extremely unlikely that Gordon Brown would pursue such a strategy so close to a general election. If it happened David “Call-me-prime-minister” Cameron would make a lot of Labour-destroyed-the-union hay and the SNP would, presumably, be cook-a-hoop. Still, it’s worth talking about, isn’t it?

And what about repartition? That’s been suggested a few times but never got terribly far up the political agenda as it doesn’t really suit either republicans or unionists. But it may, at some point, suit the British government to get the scissors our along the Bann (and Newry as well as, presumably, turning West Belfast into West Berlin - or perhaps east Berlin if you’re a unionist).

This is all aimless musing. Anyone care to join me?