Assembly reform needed but to enable rather than to block

Rick Wilford the recently retired professor of Politics at Queens, provides  an analysis in the Belfast Telegraph  of the deadlock in power sharing that is as bleak as it is authoritative.

“That there is a case for reforming the Assembly and the Executive is irrefutable”… This was recognised by all parties at St Andrews, where they agreed to create an “institutional review committee” charged to examine the operational aspects of the Strand One institutions.

This became the Assembly and Executive Review Committee which was established as long ago as 2007.

“The committee’s labours proved to be a case of an elephant that yielded a mouse…  As a result, the UK Government’s legislation was almost devoid of institutional reform proposals. It provided a permissive power to reduce the Assembly to 90 members; signalled the end of dual mandates in 2016; and extended the Assembly mandate to five years, thereby putting it on a par with counterparts in Wales and Scotland.

Whatever the intentions, DUP Executive reform has only tightened deadlock

   It provided that, where ministerial consensus could not be achieved and a vote was required, three ministers could trigger a cross-community vote at the Executive to prevent unilateral action by another… The introduction of this device can be understood in a number of ways: as a means of engineering consensus; of managing dissensus; or, more bleakly, of creating Executive gridlock – the view taken by the UUP, which opposed its adoption… In the event, the latter view has prevailed, and it has provided a further brake on the wheel of devolution, rather than an additional gear to drive it forward. No matter how elegantly re-designed the architecture of devolution may become, without a spirit of trust and mutual accommodation among those who inhabit and animate the institutions, they will continue to founder and, ultimately, fail. In that respect, agreed institutional reform would itself be a signal that trust can be built anew”

Wilford  token note of hope is hardly convincing. What struck me from afar, reading the proceedings of the Assembly Executive Review Committee, was  the modesty of the reforms proposals and the poverty of debate about them , as  if nobody had much faith in the possibility of reform. The parties need  to convince each other that the motives  for reform is  to enable more than to block. Otherwise there’ll be no real  change.   What wonderful policies were held back  from the light of day? Few that I can see. Mainly wrangling over the Maze, an Irish Language Act, holding up other institutional reforms in local government.  With all respect to Senator Hart’s efforts, deadlock seems set to continue unless the parties spot an advantage in the 2015 and 2106 polls to break it with decent ideas that affect people’s lives more than the tired old political game.

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