His lecture’s title was “Creating a Culture of Accountability: Lessons from a Year in Opposition” using the themes of Process, Power, Persuasion, and People … four Ps, almost Presbyterian! Matthew’s address was followed by a response by Professor Stephen Farry (now Co-director of Ulster University’s Strategic Policy Unit and Professor of Strategic Policy In Practice) and a Q&A with the audience.
You can watch the event, or read the script below.
Thank you to Ulster University for hosting this talk…
And to Stephen Farry for introducing and facilitating this…
Stephen already looks 10 years younger and infinitely more mellowed having been freed from the burdens of elected politics in Northern Ireland…
But I look forward to engaging with him tonight and going forward in his new role…
The theme of the talk tonight is accountability, and more widely how we improve our democratic structures and ultimately improve our quality of Government in this region…
But before we get into the meat of the discussion, we first need to establish whose accountability we are talking about?
Now, some of you may have played a popular little quiz in the past where you are asked to guess the correct collective noun for one group or another…
A flock of sheep…
A pride of Lions…
A troop of monkeys…
Its probably a bit early in the evening to indulge in audience participation but does anyone know the correct collective term for local politicians…?
Feel free to shout out any answers…
No, its not a shower…
Or a rabble…
It is in fact ‘A Stormont’
Or simply ‘Stormont’
Whenever the Executive marked its one-year anniversary, the question asked in large parts of the media was…
“How has Stormont done?”
The BBC asked the big question…
Twelve months on from the return of devolution, has Stormont managed any real delivery?
One is tempted to ask: who and what is Stormont?
The literal answer is that it is an area of East Belfast, specifically a publicly owned estate which houses the Northern Ireland Assembly and various devolved Government departments…
Of course we all know that more generally the noun “Stormont” – a metonym if you want to get technical – is a term used to describe devolved Government in general
It is a term like “Westminster” or “Holyrood” or “Capitol Hill”…
But when comes to delivery on health, or housing, or infrastructure…
No one in London or Edinburgh or Dublin asks…
How is Westminster or Holyrood… or Leinster House doing…
They ask how is the Government doing?
How are ministers and their officials doing?
This should be one of the most basic questions in a representative democracy…
In an election, we give power to a group of people…
After that, we are entitled…
To hold them to account for what they do with that power….
Because elections aren’t the only part of democracy…
What comes in elections between matters too…
But that’s the part where our democracy has always struggled…
No one elected Stormont – its just a group of buildings…
They did elect a group of politicians called MLAs, from whom the members of the Executive are drawn…
Those are the people, both individually and collectively, we as the official opposition, the media and the public should be holding to account…
If our democracy was truly healthy then the public would see a connection between the votes they cast and the society they live in…
The public services they rely on…
They would, in short, feel a sense of empowerment and ownership over the political system…
I think even the most optimistic booster of the Executive would struggle to claim that we have anything like a healthy, active democratic discourse
In which those who are elected are given the tools and trusted to make change…
Then held meaningfully to account for the improvements they deliver…
Or don’t deliver…
And, yes, given credit for when they effect meaningful change…
Tonight I want to reflect on why I think it is essential that we work urgently to improve the quality of our democracy…
That means improving not just the quality of debate or scrutiny at Stormont…
But about empowering our citizens to feel like they are active participants in a system that can respond to their needs…
Nor is it just about party politics…
Its also about how institutions like the Northern Ireland civil service and the media play their part in fostering a healthy democracy…
And a sense that politics can lead to change in people’s lives…
In short, I will argue that 27 years on from the Agreement…
With the world outside utterly changed from the era of multilateralism and international partnership from which the Agreement emerged…
UK Governments only sporadically engaged in this place…
And the public inside the North deeply sceptical…
Now has to be the time for our devolved politics, to take some responsibility…
To be honest with the public about the challenges we face…
And the decisions that are necessary to deal with them…
Because we cannot simply drift on as we are…
Where elections are almost entirely disconnected from the quality of governance and the public services people experience in their day to day lives…
Where so much attention and energy is devoted to whether devolved Government will exist or not, rather than what devolved Government is actually achieving for people…
To be clear, this speech is not going to be a counsel of despair…
There are many reasons to be positive…
If I’m allowed to be immodest for a moment, I would suggest that one reason for positivity is the presence of an official and constructive Opposition…
I am in no doubt that we have started to positively shift the culture of our politics and our public debate over the course of our year in Opposition…
I know from the response that I have received from ordinary punters on the street…
“You’re that Daniel McCrossan,” they say…
Or: “Are you that guy Joe Kennedy?”
Then once they have established which ginger politician they are talking to, they are very supportive of our work in Opposition…
To give a couple of examples…
The Executive failed to get even half way through its legislative programme for 2024…
(This target by the way was not about Bills getting onto the statute book but simply being introduced into Stormont)
And the overall Programme for Government remains still in draft form a year on, with its unsigned off objectives vague and mostly unspecific…
Now legislative programmes and programmes for government might seem like the epitome of abstract political devices that mean little to ordinary people…
But they are critical to allowing ordinary people to have some sense of a plan being worked toward o their behalf…
In the past, assuming an Executive was sitting at all, it would have been left to an outside body to point out these shortcomings…
With all major parties represented inside the Executive and therefore theoretically accountable for the Executive’s shortcomings, either there was no incentive for robust accountability…
Or a party inside the Executive would have to become a hybrid internal opposition, holding some power while also regularly challenging and calling out other, usually larger parties with more power…
This was a role the SDLP was often perceived as playing in the past, particularly in the years after the St Andrews Agreement…
And the truth is that while the specific criticisms from the smaller parties were often legitimate, in an overall sense it probably confused the public rather than increasing accountability…
Since we have been the official Opposition we have been a clearly defined force for accountability and challenge…
And I believe we have forced the debate away from commentary on internal squabbling between Executive parties, and towards a clearer focus on what is and is not being delivered for citizens
I would also say that the emergence of new and independent bodies and think-tanks, some like the Fiscal Council with an official remit and others such as the new policy institute here at Ulster, the think tank Pivotal and others and are examples of a maturing policy debate…
These are tentative signs, but they do represent progress…
It would be easy for the Opposition to simply invite cynicism…
And there are plenty of reasons to be cynical about our politics…
But as an Opposition we want to do more than simply rage at how bad things are…
We want to explain how they can be made better…
So tonight’s talk is about not just listing the challenges we face…
But also venturing some potential solutions…
If the broad purpose is to talk about how we make our politics more responsible, more accountable and ultimately more democratic…
That matters not just for the politics of society in the here and now…
But it also matters because of the complicated and momentous conversations we will be having about the future of the whole island of Ireland, and these islands…
There will be four broad themes:
1. Process
2. Power
3. Persuasion
4. And finally and most importantly, People
I first became leader of the Opposition not last February when the Executive returned, but in July 2022, soon after the Assembly election of 2022…
That was an election in which the SDLP had not done well, to put it mildly…
And we were in the surreal position of entering Opposition without a Government to oppose…
Indeed for the first 18 months of our time in Opposition virtually all of the oxygen in local politics was consumed by the question of whether the DUP would nominate a deputy First Minister and therefore allow an Executive to be created…
The big political question in those years was…
What are the conditions that would encourage or force the DUP to re-enter Government?
And what exactly is going on inside the DUP…?
Those questions took precedence over any other…
More than the ongoing crisis in the health service….
More than the crippling cost of living pressures which were facing families at that time…
Lets leave aside for a second the substance of the DUP’s complaints about the Protocol
Because just a few years before the question was how precisely to get Sinn Féin to re-enter Government…
Then between 2018 and 2020, how Sinn Fein and the DUP could be collectively forced, or persuaded or cajoled back into office…
Again, I won’t labour the specifics of the issues except to say they were of genuine import in and of themselves – whether investigating the RHI scandal or fair treatment for the Irish language…
But, as with the DUP’s more recent collapse, what began as a political tactic predicated on a specific political demand became a drawn-out negotiation…
In which the original demands become submerged and hard to remember…
And the main thing that matters is the willingness or ability of the main actors to bring the process to a conclusion…
And that word is one I want to pause on… process….
In the most recent collapse there were in fact several successive negotiations between the UK Government and the EU, then the UK Government and the DUP,
then an internal DUP negotiation…
And just to say at this stage of the evening if you are wearing a wire…
That’s ok…
I’m not angry…
But this is all being recorded so you didn’t need to bother
By the time the institutions were restored a year ago, a statistically minuscule proportion of the population would have been able to tell you what the DUP’s core aims were when first they walked out…
An even smaller proportion would have been able to tell you what the DUP actually achieved from nearly two years of their boycott…
But the fact was that the bringing down of the institutions was treated as simply another phase of the ongoing and seemingly interminable political process in Northern Ireland…
It was the same between 2017 and 2020 -perhaps even more so…
In these years of collapse there were countless occasions where camera crews and journalists stood outside Stormont House, or in the Great Hall at Parliament Buildings, or outside Hillsborough Castle, or occasionally Downing Street or Government Buildings…
Delegations from parties would troop in, exchange positions, then troop out to repeat lines to the waiting media… who were always there to cover it, perhaps because it fitted with the easy grammar of political coverage here over the previous three decades…
Eventually in 2020, a text was bounced on the leading parties and the Executive was restored…
Between 2022 and 2024, none of the other parties were even participants in what passed for negotiations…
Nevertheless, there were preposterous charades designed to look like multi-party talks…
In the absence of any clear route to restoration of devolution, Chris Heaton Harris would invite parties to round table summits at the NIO with no substantive agenda other than a photo-opp designed to register in the public mind as some form of process…
Then the parties would dutifully troop out and repeat their existing positions to cameras, who were always there to cover even the most pointless of meetings…
I think it is important for all of us in politics and the media here to pause and acknowledge how utterly preposterous all of that looked, and was…
Worse, it was utterly, shamefully detached from the challenges being faced by ordinary people…
Whether they were workers feeling the pressure of inflation…
Or someone wasting their final good years on a waiting list for a knee replacement…
Or just a citizen with a vague expectation of some kind of accountable governance…
Though the DUP was responsible for that stalemate, there is a wider responsibility that falls on our political class, and indeed a wider group – which includes the two Governments and the media – for sustaining the idea that politics is one long drawn out negotiation…
The historic phase of negotiation which led to the Agreement was nearly three decades ago…
It was brilliantly dramatized in the Owen McCafferty play ‘Agreement’…
And the stakes and the pressure were enormous and historic..
And of course after the initial agreement there began a long sequence of subsequent negotiations…
Leeds Castle….
Weston Park…
St Andrews…
Hillsborough Castle…
Stormont House…
At times, Northern Ireland politics seemed more like a National Trust membership than a mandate for shared Government…
25 or 30 years ago the public, in large part, were enthusiastic about dialogue being at the centre of politics…
They knew that negotiation was a route to a peace, and stability…
As an alternative to the horrors of conflict…
But as years passed, then decades and now more than a generation since that original Agreement, inspirational, almost miraculous as it was…
People of all political stripes have grown ever more detached and alienated from politics as a process…
Especially when that process appears geared towards the interests of political parties rather than ordinary people…
It is fundamentally disempowering for ordinary citizens in so many ways and it has to end…
And when one of the most effective and repeatedly deployed tactics in the politics of process is to force your point by collapsing the very institution of devolved Government…
So how do we move away from framing politics as one endless process that serves the interests of political parties, rather than the people who elect them?
First, we need further reform of the functioning of the Stand 1 institutions to remove the ability of one party to collapse Government…
That aspiration is easier said than done but it is not impossible…
We have secured finally a process to examine options on Assembly reform, with the aim of making recommendations on how to remove the so-called nuclear veto, in a Stormont committee named the Assembly & Executive Review Committee…
But there has to be more than institutional reform…
But changing the process is not enough…
Reform cannot simply be a political line hurled at Sinn Fein and the DUP…
And no change in process will be enough if we don’t change the culture of how we see and use power in local politics…
And to return to the main theme of tonight’s talk, we need to reconnect power to responsibility…
The purpose of power sharing was supposed to be about the transformative potential of working together…
That potential still exists and is still harnessed for the public good…
Because the very fact of sharing power, genuinely working together, can lead to exponentially better outcomes…
Whether that is the impact of making joint representations to the UK Government, or collectively ensuring civil servants are working across departmental boundaries…
But more often than not we know that power is not something pooled and deployed to maximum effect, but r divvied up and jealously guarded by both political parties and departments…
One year in to the Executive’s latest incarnation and political parties have already reverted to the tedious practice of championing “their minister’s” outlandish achievements while casting side-eye at the modest work rate of those of other parties…
It is unavoidable that political parties will emphasise their own achievements and those of their party’s politicians…
But it only invites ridicule when, as happened in a TV discussion I participated in recently, representatives of all four of Executive parties are asked to comment on Executive performance and then list their own party’s Ministers in the Executive as being uniquely hard working and wise…
Not so much My Little Pony as My Wee Minister…
This political silo effect is both a product of and a driver of a deeper problem…
That deeper problem is the absence of a clearly articulated and strictly prioritised Programme for Government, backed by a Budget which funds the interventions therein…
And where possible, there are clearly understood and realistic targets for the public to understand…
The fact that there is a draft Programme for Government at all might be called modest progress…
But it isn’t progress if it doesn’t boil down priorities to a comprehensible and deliverable set of outcomes…
It is clear that the single most overwhelming issue is the multi-faceted crisis in our health service. No short Programme for Government document can adequately describe the range of policies needed to reduce cancer waiting times, increase social care capacity and address all the other pressures…
But it can offer a finite list of actions and targets for the public to understand…
Instead, the PfG contains non-committal descriptive text that could have been written by Chat GPT…
Under the heading ‘Our Proposed Action’ it states:
“The need to improve performance, increase productivity ad improve the quality of care is well understood….”
And it goes on like that for two pages without any discernible outputs or targets…
Compare it to the equivalent section of the Republic’s Programme for Government, which says the Irish Government will, and I quote:
“further reduce waiting times, targeting all patients to be seen within the Slaintecare target of 10 and 12 weeks.
Increase capacity by between 4,000 and 4,500 inpatient beds
Increase ICU bed capacity by least 100 beds
Build four new elective hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Galway…”
And it goes on like that…
Now, the health system south of the border is no paradise and I make no predictions about whether the coalition Government will deliver its pledges…
But I do know what its pledges are because they are printed in black and white…
And if I was a patient or indeed an Opposition politician in Dublin I would be able to hold the Government to account on delivery
Not only does the absence of clear plans and targets limit the accountability of the health minister, it makes it harder to make the so-called difficult decisions on reform and reconfiguration…
Because the public are not empowered to make the link between, for example, closing a minor injury unit in order to consolidate a service and wider plan to reduce waiting times…
Which in turns makes it easier for other Executive parties and Ministers to slide out of their own accountability for fixing the health service…
This is just one example…
Another one came a few weeks ago when the Assembly debated a Sinn Féin motion calling for the Health Minister to develop specialist autism services…
Nothing wrong with that on its face…
And it was promoted widely by the First Minister, who is the Head of Government here…
This was a non-binding motion which created no legal change and committed no money to autism services…
The First Minister is perfectly entitled to promote motions by Sinn Fein, but she and her party must know that a casual follower on social media might assume that a head of Government highlighting something happening in a legislature must be significant..
It must mean something tangible that might affect them or someone they know in need of such services…
It did not mean any of those things…
I can think of no other jurisdiction in which a head of Government would think it appropriate to try to garner PR by promoting a non-binding motion calling on a minister in her own Government to do something…
The first Minister and other Ministers have real power to change people’s lives…
But they trivialise that power, and that trust the public places in us, when they act as if our words don’t matter…
It is incumbent on all of us to take ourselves and the role we have seriously…
We have never properly established a relationship between power, responsibility and accountability…
And that is at the root of so many challenges…
So what do we do about it?
– A statutory duty to cooperate between departments
– A statutory power for Fiscal Council or AN Other body to report on Executive core targets not simply a wellbeing framework
– An enhanced ministerial code and pledge of office to embed joint responsibility including for PfG delivery
But it would be disingenuous to pretend that the disjunction between power and responsibility is something that only occurs at the devolved level…
The vast imbalance in power between central and devolved Government inside the UK, and the ability of the UK Government to simply disregard the wishes of both the people of the North… and indeed their elected representatives… was stunningly illustrated through the Brexit process…
And in ways that shocked and offended all constitutional traditions…
But it isn’t just Brexit and its outworkings…
But both periods of Assembly functionality since then, from 2020 to 2022 and for the past year, have been marked by UK Governments pursuing heedless and damaging policies against the wishes of virtually all local parties, whether the appalling and now partially repealed Legacy Act or the appalling and entirely unrepealed Electronic Travel Authorisation which threatens our tourism…
Issues like this underline the importance of robust and diligent representation at Westminster…
In the area of spending, much of what happens between the Stormont department of finance and the Treasury is entirely opaque…
At the minute, for example there is a protracted and furtive negotiation ongoing in relation to Barnett consequentials on Employer NIC
So to address this ongoing imbalance in devolution, the SDLP will advocate for a new duty of cooperation between Whitehall departments and devolved committees
The Secretary of State appeared at this university just a few weeks ago and made some comments which garnered a lot of attention…
And while there was some significant merit in pressing the Executive to get with delivery
It would be helpful if his own Government recognised where it and previous British Governments have undermined rather than enhanced public trust in politics here…
The Secretary of State’s own father used his final speech in the Commons to ask a series of essential questions that touch on some of tonight’s
What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?
Tony Benn’s argument was not just that we needed a responsive, engaged Executive and legislature…
But that we need a healthy active democratic debate and ordinary citizens who feel they can effect change, including by influencing their elected representatives…
And not just at election times…
But do we have that here?
Research conducted by Carnegie found that citizens here were the least likely in the UK to express trust in politics…
Given repeated collapses that may not be surprising…
What was surprising to see was that in Northern Ireland, which is a small region where politicians pride themselves on being close to communities and electors, people were less likely than elsewhere to say they felt they could influence local politics…
But perhaps when you put it in the context of decades of politics as a never-ending political process which incentivises dysfunction and self-interest…
And some politicians who have had difficulty accepting responsibility and accountability in return for power…
And, it should be said, certain parts of the media which have often treated post-Agreement politics here as a circus to be pointed at rather than seriously scrutinised…
On the other hand we have reasons to be positive…
We produce extremely politically engaged and aware young people, many of whom want to stay and improve this society…
And there are even some here tonight…
We have a healthy culture of demonstration and peaceful protest dating back to the civil rights era and before – you only have to look at last year’s anti-racist demonstrations and the demonstrations against the slaughter of innocents in Gaza in Belfast and across the region…
The local media, particularly those reliant on circulation and advertising face constant pressure, but we retain a relatively strong regional and independent media compared to some neighbouring jurisdictions…
Though the standard of debate and scrutiny in the Assembly is often cringeworthy, there are new and able MLAs in all parties who are genuinely interested in scrutiny, debate, challenge and yes, persuasion…
And I just wanted to pause to acknowledge that tomorrow is the third anniversary of the passing of Christopher Stalford, a hugely talented man with whom I agreed on very little but whom I think about often…
Because of the young family he left behind, and also because of his commitment to and love of debate and argument…
I used the word persuasion deliberately, and not just because it starts with the letter P like all the other themes…!
But because it isn’t a concept we engage with much here…
It often feels like nobody ever tries to persuade anybody of anything…
Unionists are unionist
Nationalists are nationalist
Others are neither, but even that often feels like a dug in position…
And on the so-called difficult questions…
Whether hospital reorganisation or reform of other public services or raising new forms of revenue to invest in infrastructure…
There is little to no political will by the big parties to persuade the wider public why even a mildly unpopular course of action is necessary…
Ultimately, this too disempowers citizens and makes a mockery of true democracy…
Which is not supposed to be just about reflecting back people’s pre-existing views…
In the Assembly chamber yesterday, I asked the new finance minister what he planned to do to fulfil Sinn Fein’s 2022 election manifesto pledge to seek greater fiscal devolution to the North…
After all his party has now held the finance portfolio for most of this decade and has consistently called for more devolution of fiscal powers…
As has the SDLP…
An independent commission on the subject, appointed by Conor Murphy, reported nearly three years ago but there is no clear statement of intent by the now Finance Minister…
John O’Dowd told me in so many words that he wasn’t there to be held accountable for the Sinn Fein manifesto, and effectively dismissed the question…
That is extraordinary, and not just because of the attitude it reveals to manifestos and indeed elections…
But also the attitude to being held accountable for words that are said and promises that are made…
The question of fiscal devolution isn’t just a geeky budgetary one, it gets to the heart of the looming debate my party and the finance minister’s want to have – the New Ireland debate…
If we believe that constitutional change is the way to allow more people to fulfil their potential, to live better lives in a more healthy and just society, and to overcome the burdens and divisions of history to build something new and positive, something better than what we have now…
There is going to have to be an extraordinary exercise in democratic engagement and empowerment…
We will need to inspire people from all backgrounds…
But also make and win complex arguments…
Confront trade-offs and explain why we believe the benefits of constitutional change outweigh the perceived risks…
There is a tendency to focus on the actions that need to be taken by Governments in Dublin and London…
And yes, the Irish Government does need to do more focussed planning for change…
The British Government does need to provide clarity on the criteria for referendum…
But to give them all the power would be to disempower people here, again…
We need to take responsibility for inspiring the debate and generating the kind of active, citizen led debate that delivered massive social changes by popular vote in the South…
And nearly secured Scottish independence in 2014…
In Scotland, the wider public debated the niceties of currency unions and fiscal transfers…
In the South, what had been one of the most conservative countries in Western Europe confronted and debated previously taboo social questions and made change via popular mandate…
But the truth is that parts of the political establishments in both Dublin and London have a tendency to see politics in Northern Ireland as mostly about avoiding headaches…
The world beyond, whether in the US or Europe, is not the world it was in 1998 where our small region could command remarkable levels of attention and support…
And the dark anti-democratic forces we are seeing globally are not good news for any democracy…
But to deliver a better North, and ultimately the New Ireland I and my party want to see, we are going to have to take more responsibility for shaping our own future…
Confronting and debating real choices rather than simply marking time…
This place has been changed over the last few decades, and mostly for the better…
But we won’t be able to change the North we have now or build something new in the future…
Unless we build a healthier democracy…
With accountability and responsibility at its core…
There are no easy routes or policy levers to pull to generate this kind of societal change, and in many ways what needs to happens is a culture shift which includes all of us in public life, the civil service and the media…
Among the ideas that might help are:
A enhanced programme of civic consultation, reviving the idea of the long forgotten civic forum, running in parallel to the work of the Executive, but with more focused work programmes including areas of recognised complexity – such as healthcare reform and institutional reform …
A new Public Service Journalism Fund, an idea which arose from a call for evidence on media sustainability which my All-Party Group undertook in 2021
An enhanced civil service recruitment programme aimed at getting young graduates and school leavers into public service, inspired by tackling the biggest challenges…
These ideas, along with the others I’ve outlined tonight, are proposals that are themselves open for challenge and discussion…
But it is clear to me that for the reasons I’ve outlined tonight…
The huge challenges we face now and the momentous debates to come…
The changing outside world which will not solve our problems for us, and in many cases will make them worse…
We need to inject responsibility, accountability and real democracy into a jaded politics…
An end to politics as merely one unending process of negotiation for the good of parties not people…
A culture of taking accountability for how power is used, not merely holding power, shifting blame and marking time…
And a new commitment to argument, challenge and persuasion… both for the challenges of the here and now and the big debates to come…
Our people are not stupid…
They know the challenges we face and the opportunities that lie ahead…
They are the descendants not just of a conflicted past, but of a radical, dissenting tradition which was the intellectual hotbed of this island…
Ireland’s north star of debate and dissent…
It’s time to empower them and reconnect them and all of us to that proud tradition…
Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is a FactCheckNI director; a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland; and a member of the Corrymeela Community.
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