Wednesday, May 07, 2008
“and that he hoped that next year..”
Whilst the Northern Ireland deputy First Minister has claimed, inaccurately, that his party’s major partners in the mandatory coalition had promised to devolve policing and justice powers by the target date of May - and in the absence of a Plan B there may well be internal party reasons behind his claims - the NI Secretary of State, Paul Goggins, MP, is at least making a case for the devolution of those powers. From the NIO statement
Addressing delegates at the PSNI’s Superintendents’ Association Annual Conference, the minister [Paul Goggins] said that policies to tackle the wide range of policing and justice issues cannot be developed in isolation and that he hoped that next year, a locally elected and accountable justice minister will attend the conference.
He said: “There has to be a joined up approach across Government to tackle crime and make our streets safer. The police cannot achieve this in isolation and so need to work in partnership with the local community.
“That’s why the devolution of policing and justice is so important. These crucial areas of responsibility cannot be separated from wider social and economic policies.
“The remaining challenge is to build on the growing public support and confidence in local political leadership and deliver the final stage of devolution by transferring policing and justice powers to the Assembly.”
Although, as he has already shown, consultation with the Assembly on non-devolved matters is possible.
And there is partnership, of sorts, with local communities.
One more point to note, as detailed here, the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis at the end of February this year passed this motion
“This Ard Fheis mandates the Ard Chomhairle to set out, in public, the party’s position in relation to our involvement in the current policing structures should the British Government fail to devolve policing and justice powers by the 8th May 2008.”
What’s the date again?
Pete Baker @ 08:33 PM
Ken,
“I think the consequences of dragging this out indefinitely are unpalatable if they truly want to keep the Executive going.”
This is certainly a possibility. I’m not sure what those wider impacts could be. The trouble is that SF has now got commitments to people far beyond the movement itself. To that extent it is no long about ‘sinn fein’.
There is a longer term problem for both the big parties and that is delivery. Impasses tend to end in ‘no shows’. That’s fine for the odd set piece, but the whole Executive could find itself in disrepute if it becomes a pattern.
What SF needs to do is start picking some fights it can feasibly win. The reality is that it can’t do that by picking fights with its big brother, the DUP. Even in the power sharing Executive, majority rule it would seem, still rules.
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 10:51 AMMick
This is certainly a possibility. I’m not sure what those wider impacts could be. The trouble is that SF has now got commitments to people far beyond the movement itself. To that extent it is no long about ‘sinn fein’.
Which is true to an extent. But SF simply cannot allowed the continuing arse kicking the DUP is handing out to continue. The base will go mental, and as much as parties like being broad coalitions, alienating your base is lethal - check out Labour’s last election results. Second, part of SF’s appeal that propelled it where it is now is that it was seen as taking a more robust position, and better able to stand up to (or draw concessions from) Unionism. Weakness here seems toxic.
What SF needs to do is start picking some fights it can feasibly win. The reality is that it can’t do that by picking fights with its big brother, the DUP. Even in the power sharing Executive, majority rule it would seem, still rules.
I disagree. People can only really score “victories” with the acquiescence of the other block. Moreover, aside from Ruane, who might be part of some mad plan anyway, SF ministers have been doing a reasonably effective job and certainly no worse than the DUP average. The DUP has had a hatful more issues where it wants to take a negative stance, so it’s been more “successful”. But as much as is talked about mutual veto favouring the “status quo”, parties do not get in power to do nothing. If the DUP continues to kill just about everything SF wants, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what happens next. And even if the Assembly manages to trundle on, it is electorally damaging to both parties.
The DUP is pursuing a strategy that can only be sustained by SF acquiescence. That is not a strategy that can be pursued forever, otherwise the DUP will have to face a party that will not acquiesce. If they are clever they learn how much to draw things out, and when to let go.
I don’t think we’re too far off. You worry about lack of delivery leading to the Assembly being in disrepute, I worry that getting to that position risks the whole show.
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 11:13 AMThat’s a nice point ken. I’m not worried about it per se, but I do think the parties should be. None of us can say what the future consequences may or may not be. Both parties’ tickets out of political obscurity (I mean that in a sense that’s wider than NI ie, DUP, the UK and SF, the Republic) rely on making this work.
Despite SF’s survivalist technique of paying their representatives reduced wages, I don’t have any sense that they have more appetite for blowing things up than the DUP. I don’t imagine we’ve arrived at an ‘end of history’ in Fukyama’s sense, but a Rubicon definitively has been crossed.
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 11:35 AMDespite SF’s survivalist technique of paying their representatives reduced wages, I don’t have any sense that they have more appetite for blowing things up than the DUP. I don’t imagine we’ve arrived at an ‘end of history’ in Fukyama’s sense, but a Rubicon definitively has been crossed.
I’m doubt either party has any appetite for it, I just feel the the logic of current positions will force hands to be moved in ways that puts the Assembly at risk: MAD was designed in. Unfortunately, that assumed the various actors were rational, always a dangerous assumption here.
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 12:34 PMGreat debate.
Can’t add , but might simplify:
Uptil now its been the British and Irish Gov’ts, under the stewardship of Blair and Aherne that have cajoled SF and the DUP into the St.Andrews Agreement.
With these two having left the stage, and power-sharing resumed; the acid-test of this Assembely is:
Can it agree to the transfer of P&J;on its own?
The mechanisms say that it has to.Personnaly I believe the TUV have put a spanner in the works; and that is dangerous to the executive.
How much of Jim Allister’s spiel is prejudice and how much of it is genuine is another debate.Aside from that I can only hope and pray that over the summer we see arrests in the Quinn case; and no statements from SF saying “political policing”.
In a way they can’t do that now, as they’ve been given a fig-leaf by the IMC.I hate to have to end on that note, but can’t help but think the whole Quinn case is best summed up by the words of Laurel and Hardy:
“That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into “
Direct that to Conor Murhpy in particular.Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 04:42 PM“Every time Pete Baker makes to post I can name you at least five nationalist bloggers here who will immediately come on and claim that black was white just because Pete is the originator of the topic.” - Quizdaemon
Spot on, and despite these incessant abuses of the ‘ball, not man’ rule by nationalists that are intolerant of dissenting or objective viewpoints, I have yet to observe Pete Baker ban the persistent offenders. Instead, he patiently deals with the caterwauling and knee-jerk vitriol, attempting to return the thread to its topic.
“The inaccurate part (which doesn’t make it a lie btw, it could just be poorly wrought analysis on the part of DFM and many of his senior party colleagues) is the assertion that the St Andrew’s Agreement includes devolution of policing and justice powers by today. This may be what Mr McGuinness hopes/believes, but it is not strictly true. It is however a clever play on semantics.” - Mick Fealty
Yes, it could be incompetent negotiation on the part of Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, or it could be that Mr McGuinness was unable to secure the timeframe that his party’s Ard Fheis required as a condition of allowing Mr McGuinness to place his bum in a ministerial seat, and that his solution to this impasse was to claim that the commitment had been secured, basing his claim on nothing more substantial than Junior’s statement that he would stand by St Andrews’ Agreement (which didn’t commit to a timeframe) and couldn’t be held to mean anything other than a general pledge of good faith on behalf of Junior.
The problem for Mr McGuinness is that he misrepresented the reality to his party’s Ard Fheis. They will have to decide if this misrepresentation was the result of incompetence on their part by appointing someone who acted incompetently in failing to secure a written and unqualified guarantee and, indeed, secured no commitment to a timeframe at all due to his naivety, or if they were lied to by someone who had a motive to lie to them and who has a history of lying to official bodies when its interests conflict with his own (as Mr McGuinness did to the Saville Inquiry), in which case they were also incompetent to appoint him as their chief negotiator and were also incompetent in failing to question him about the nature of the secured commitment in order to ascertain its quality (or blatant lack, thereof).
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 07:15 PMBy the way, that ‘problem’ is self-solving as far as Mr McGuinness is concerned. If he easily made hoodwinked fools out of his party’s Ard Fheis, then they cannot take action against him without highlighting the fact that they are a bunch of hoodwinked fools who are easily duped - and duped by those they appointed! So, they’ll pretend that nothing of the sort ever happened, thereby freeing Mr McGuinness from the consequences of lying to them.
Posted by on May 08, 2008 @ 08:02 PM
