Stormont – home to the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly – is a lonely place these days. Soon it will be even quieter. Next month, the current batch of MLA’s will pack up their offices. When they will be replaced depends on whether the British government allows May’s elections to proceed or not. Slugger took the ride out of the city today to talk to a member of an endangered minority – a pro-Trimble, pro-agreement Ulster Unionist. Read on for the scuttlebutt on why Trimble may be better off losing the forthcoming election, why there’s more hope for Robinson than Donaldson, and why a “final” settlement may lead only to “thoroughly bad, undemocratic and unaccountable government.”
A couple of months ago, many regarded the Ulster Unionists as in serious trouble. The DUP bandwagon seemed unstoppable – and we reported yesterday, DUP activists are still confident of being the biggest party after the next election.
What then for the UUP – and more pertinently for First Minister (Hibernating), David Trimble? Slugger (encouraged by rumours that wife, Daphne, regularly issues the “retire now” ultimatum) had thought this would be the end for Trimble. Our source disagrees.
“Trimble will be in an interesting position then – and the DUP will face enormous pressure. Donaldson isn’t going to want to take over. And Trimble is a man who doesn’t like loss. He knows this is going to be a well-written about historical period. He want to retire smelling of roses, with the agreement bedded down and the assembly working.”
This analysis confirms the received wisdom that the DUP is now a pro-Agreement party in disguise. “I don’t think the DUP opposes the Belfast Agreement in principle,” our source says. “They can’t admit that publicly. They can’t admit that if they renegotiate, they’re going to settle for what’s effectively the same agreement.”
“If it’s DUP/Sinn Fein after May 1st, they will talk, indirectly at first. You’ll get the Good Friday Agreement Mark 2, which will be 95% of what we have now. And they’ll both sell that to their own constituency. Robinson will find the 2 or 3 good points. Being First Minister, for example. And the fact that the Ulster Unionists are no longer in a position to sell everyone down the river.”
The nightmare scenario, then, for the pro-agreement wing of the Ulster Unionist Party may not be Trimble losing the election, but him narrowly winning it – and finding himself reliant on an assembly where only a third of his own party is loyal to him. That would leave Jeffrey Donaldson in the box seat, the DUP carping on the outside, and Trimble squeezed in between.
This raises the possibility that the election will – after all the signals to the contrary – be postponed. Both governments see the attraction of a clear result, leaving the Shinners and the DUP to battle it out. But if they’re not going to get clarity, it might be better to give Trimble time to win big enough concessions from the IRA to strengthen his position.
Whichever way the short-term politicking goes and barring no return to out-and-out hostilities, at some stage Northern Irish politicians are going to have to settle down and address bread-and-butter political issues. Our source, however, has doubts about the capacity of current unionist structures to address these challenges.
The protestant middle class retreated from politics many years ago and shows few signs of coming back. The current generation of politicians are those who were prepared to put their head above their parapets when even being a councillor made you a potential target. Brave men and women for sure – but they’ve got a lot of work to do if they’re to make the grade in a much more competitive and demanding political environment.
The key challenges are modernising Northern Ireland’s crumbling infrastructure, restructuring its economy away from a dependence on low skill labour, and building more accountable political structures. All this must be accomplished within the constraints of a power-sharing system that positively discourages politicians from making difficult decisions.
There’s a lot of learning to be done and serious doubts about whether the current crop of politicians is prepared to spend time back at school. “We could go through all this and end up with thoroughly bad, undemocratic and unaccountable government,” our source concludes.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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