‘It’s Not Power-Sharing, It’s Mandatory Coalition’

As we edge closer to the no-confidence vote in the Assembly in Education Minister Paul Givan over his recent controversial visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, the minister himself put in a lengthy appearance on yesterday’s ‘Nolan Show’ where he gave a barnstorming defence of his actions and criticised People Before Profit, the SDLP, Sinn Féin and the Alliance Party. Sinn Féin and the Alliance Party are, of course, in government with Paul Givan and the DUP. When Stephen Nolan put it to Paul Givan that he was criticising his government partners, Givan responded pretty bluntly.

“They’re not my partners. Sinn Féin are not my partners in government. They’re there as a result of the votes that they have received during the last election just as I am there as a result of the votes that I have received. To infer that there is a partnership, that suggests something that isn’t actually how electoral politics work. We try and find common ground where we can find common ground. We seek to navigate issues that are difficult, but don’t use a pejorative term in this interview as though I am in some friendly partnership with Sinn Féin. That is not the case”

Nolan immediately focused on the key issue,“What does that say about how we need decisions to be made in Northern Ireland. You’re in a power-sharing government. Do you not want to reach out to your Executive partners?”

Givan responded that “it’s a mandatory coalition, it’s not a voluntary coalition. Do you think in a normal democracy this is something I would believe is an appropriate form of government?”

The dysfunctional nature of the Executive is seemingly baked in at this point, though Givan not even paying lip-service to the polite fiction of a partnership is slightly eyebrow-raising.

Nolan brought on our very own Editor, Mick Fealty, to ask him his thoughts on what Givan had said.

“I think he has a point. When he corrects you and says this isn’t power sharing, it’s mandatory coalition, I think it explains an awful lot of things. How ministers don’t share information with each other. How they tend to go down into their own silos and tend to do whatever they like…he’s distancing himself from the idea that there is a partnership with him…that helps him with his management of the TUV on this right…I think he’s right that this is mandatory coalition, not power-sharing, because the amount of sharing (of responsibility) that goes on which should really come with power is minimal…”

Siloed government, where each minister has seemingly absolute authority over their own departments, has been such a feature of our politics for so long it has become background noise, though it seems it has an increasingly ruinous effect. You only have to think back to where Mr Justice McAlinden recently branded the Northern Ireland Executive a laughing stock in a case where one Executive Minister (Gordon Lyons) had intervened on the side of Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson who was seeking a review against another Executive Minister, Liz Kimmins, over her decision to install Irish Language at Belfast’s Grand Central Station. The Judge was not impressed by what to him must have seemed a very sorry sight as he excoriated everyone involved…

“We need as a society to have a grown-up executive that works together, not adopting a silo mentality and throwing brush shafts into each other’s spokes for political gain,” the judge said. “It’s not working…we are being regarded as a laughing stock. “We have moved on from killing each other, but we haven’t moved much further from that,” he added.

One minister taking legal action against another from what is ostensibly the same government is definitely not a sign of a normal democracy. Is this dysfunction sustainable? Givan in his interview (and the full thing really is worth a listen) seemed to hint that he didn’t think so. With an election due in 2027, the political temperature is likely to soar across 2026, meaning we could be facing yet another political crisis on the hill in the not too distant future.