For several months now, I’ve been lost in admiration for how political journalists and commentators in Slugger and elsewhere have been making bricks without straw in trying to report the state of politics.
But now it seems, if the panels in late night’s The View are to be believed, a mad rush is on to complete a deal to restore Stormont – perhaps as early as next Tuesday when Parliament rises for Christmas. This may be a tad optimistic but not by much it seems. All parties are in full possession of the terms for the deal offered at Hillsborough and all are pressing for more, more money as usual. Talks of one kind or another are proceeding over the weekend. Momentum is key to avoid somebody sticking spokes in the works.
Newton Emerson as ever points out the complexities but the outline is clear enough. As well as a cash subsidy to deal with the year’s overspend and pay demands, NI is being offered a “fiscal floor,” a new bottom line based on need for the ongoing yearly scale of subsidy from London; an arrangement which it took ten years for Wales to negotiate. Westminster has so far set it at 124% of the public spending level for England.
Although Stormont was funded to 140 per cent of English levels as recently as 2019, that has been squeezed down to 123 per cent this year…
The 124 per cent figure was calculated by the Fiscal Council, an independent panel established under the New Decade, New Approach deal to advise Stormont on its finances. The DUP had cited this figure but now that the government has accepted it a bidding war has broken out as every party tries to own the issue. Alliance had already said the floor should be three percentage points higher due to policing costs, a claim endorsed by Prof Holtham at Westminster earlier this year. The Fiscal Council has noted it could be three points higher again due to limited tax-raising opportunities.
Chris Heaton Harris imposed two conditions, one that the Assembly is promptly restored; and two that it agrees to raise extra revenue locally, like further rate increases, or water charges or prescription charges which are paid in England according to means.
However in The View the former head of the NI Civil Service Sir David Sterling, although insisting he was now an outsider, played down the reservations, insisting that the government’s offer would probably be increased if the DUP went back, and at least maintained even it they didn’t. It will not be withdrawn. There could be no reversion to the status quo. There would no early demand to raise extra revenue either as all the emphasis should be laid on improving efficiency in above all, the health service.
So what about the DUP, the focus of so much obsession? The financial offer may have given them something else to say No to. Bribe or blackmail then? It seems the Penelope’s tapestry of the Windsor Framework is miraculously near completion, according to Enda Mc Clafferty’s report of the Hillsborough package.
We now know the government is willing to amend the UK Internal Market Act to ensure Northern Ireland businesses will continue to have access to the UK market in “all scenarios”.
This is understood to focus on how NI goods are treated as EU as GB standards diverge.
A much bigger challenge comes in the control of goods moving from GB into NI which, under the Windsor Framework, will be subject to checks and paperwork… The lanes which are to be phased in have been in operation for three months, for food products without much controversy.
As a result there is every chance the EU may agree to easements and greatly reduce checks on the green lane. This could be done through the EU-UK joint committee which oversees the deal.
This however is a significant loose end the government will have to tie up over the next few days. But nothing has dampened down rising expectations from the Donaldson camp. Among commentators only Ben Lowry of the Newsletter is a pessimist worrying about the nature of the inevitable DUP split.
Can you bear the tension? Just at the moment it seems churlish – risky even- to ask why it has taken so bloody long.
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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