As another “deadline” goes whooshing past, NI continues to choke on its indigestible form of consociationalism

I’m not sure where the northern press pack got its briefing that the DUP might come out and back the deal it has long been negotiating with the UK administration, but it looks like that call is wrong yet again.

Few, it seems, have understood the motivations of the DUP in regard to what it will take to persuade them to re-shoulder their local responsibilities and enable all parties go back into office.

The UK government has already met some of the DUP’s conditions, but it is its own withdrawal agreement (which it has no appetite to unravel) that created constitutional tension in the Irish Sea.

Unionists are wary of settling for small regulatory fixes, when what they need is some form of constitutional permanence, even if it ultimately means accepting NI’s inclusion in the EU single market.

It’s hard to see how a deal can be delivered by a UK government now in the last year of what has been a very tricky electoral term. Although you can certainly see what there might be in getting a deal for Sunak.

Domestically he desperately needs a win. A deal would allow him to substantiate some of the claims he made about the Windsor Framework, and help his failing ratings ahead of nest year’s general election.

However, if you look through the same electoral lens for the DUP all these incentives are reversed. If the legislation is not updated and renewed they face an Assembly as well as a general election this year.

A general election which, whilst it cannot offer entirely new circumstances, would certainly offer a fresh opportunity to reframe the issue and, perhaps, allow an opportunity to get wider reform onto the agenda.

Darren Marshall’s Vox Pop on Newsline last night indicated that holding out for a credible medium term would not harm the party and might even rally what has been in recent years a reluctant voter base.

There is something wrong with a system that’s so casually prone to collapse and political ransoming. Consociationalism was supposed to guard against such vicissitudes, yet it seems just to have locked it in.

A question that rarely surfaces is why have we’ve only had government for two out of the last seven years? The neglect of such obvious questions has only generated dissonance (and serial failure).

The next UK administration should start from that point and work outwards, rather than continue the bi- and trilaterals that have stymied most attempts to fix Northern Ireland post the Belfast Agreement.

What’s needed is not more preferential changes through ransom or blackmail, but change in earnest, where informed opinion co-evolves with an ability to transform seeming dissonances to opportunities. 

Prospective dates in Northern Ireland, be they promises of health reform or promises to start being good and pluralist, we now know from the last twenty five year dates generate interim timelines not deadlines.

So, be sceptical about the next publicised date in this process, whomsoever says it’s important. Another Assembly election would just be another Election to Nowhere, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The next UK General Election (to be followed in short order by another in the Republic) will be of far greater significance in setting both the direction and the tone of Northern Irish politics for a generation.