Our Political Cassandras Mull our Future – Alex Kane and Brian Feeney on Stormont’s Dysfunction

I’ve mentioned before I have a love of Greek myths, and one of the more tragic stories is that of the Trojan Priestess Cassandra, cursed to predict the future only to be ignored or not believed. She famously warned her people that the big wooden horse left by the departing Greeks was not what it seemed and of course we all know how that turned out. When reading works by some of our local political commentators, I am often put in mind of Cassandra. Particularly this morning as the Irish News has a pair of articles from both Alex Kane and Brian Feeney that are well worth a read. They are pondering the topic that seems to be preoccupying many opinion pieces recently: the belief that our political institutions are heading for yet another collapse.

Alex’s article is full of pessimism as he writes “It’s at crisis point again, partly because there is no trust between the DUP and Sinn Féin, but mostly because the reforms which the Assembly has needed have never been agreed. I don’t know about Brian – although I could have a fairly good guess – but my previous shrug of the shoulders has been replaced with a ‘just put it out of its misery’ plea.”

Some have said that if Stormont collapses again that it will be all over for power-sharing with Allison Morris for example writing for the Belfast Telegraph a few weeks ago that “I do not subscribe to “a plague on all their houses” type of commentary, but I am not being dramatic when I say the next time the Assembly collapses it won’t be coming back. What replaces it in such a scenario remains to be seen.”

But while I share Allison’s profound despair at the sheer dysfunction of the state of our system of government, I find myself agreeing with Alex’s blunt assessment of the prospects for alternatives.

“Neither the British nor Irish government want to be lumbered with the what-do-we-do-next problem. Direct rule would be unacceptable to nationalists, and some form of hybrid joint authority would be similarly unacceptable to unionists. A border poll is not going to happen. No-one is ready for it. There would be chaos. So we have to face the fact that we are lumbered with the political equivalent of Schrodinger’s Cat, where the institutions could be alive or dead, but nobody wants the likes of me opening the box and providing hard evidence one way or the other.”

He’s not wrong. All the alternatives to our current system would be unacceptable to at least one constituency of our divided society and would be a dead letter if suggested. Which means that if the institutions do collapse again, I think the only plausible outcome is yet another tedious negotiation process wherein the two governments try to get it back up and running. They say it is the definition of madness to do the same thing again and again expecting a different result, but I don’t believe either London or Dublin actually anticipate any other kind of outcome. Each time they bring the institutions back from the dead they buy themselves a little bit of time where they can forget about the north and all its issues and perhaps that is enough for them now. It’s about kicking the ball down the road really and who knows, it may be someone else’s problem the next time it topples over.

Kane does try and propose a solution of sorts with a retooling of the old Civic Forum that was in place for a few years at the dawn of the millennium…“Would it be worth trying to reboot the Forum in a slightly different form and tasking it to come up with improvements to the everyday running of the place: which, among other things, would have to include finally nailing down the requirement for collective Executive responsibility, accountability and delivery of a Programme for Government? Also, key changes are required in coalition formation and the provision of real choice during elections.”

Whilst Alex is pessimistic on his own suggestion, Brian Feeney thinks the idea is simply a non-starter in his own piece where he writes “Let’s cut to the chase. My colleague, Alex Kane, wonders if a Civic Forum might be tasked with coming up with ways that Stormont could be made to work. There’s no point in rebooting the Civic Forum. The last thing we need is another expensive talking shop, especially one with no power whatsoever.”

Feeney instead goes with his own diagnosis of what is bedevilling local politics, and it is the dynamics with Unionism. Namely, that attempting to work the system and co-operate with Sinn Féin would expose the DUP to TUV charges of weakness and selling out. “Now, although the contest is between the DUP and TUV, the uninspiring, charisma-free Gavin Robinson has chosen to fight it by landing blows on Sinn Féin, making the stupidest mistake in politics, namely to move onto to a more extreme party’s ground to outdo them: people vote for the real thing…The net effect is that any progress at Stormont is doomed. Fear of TUV accusations of appearing sensible, reasonable, accommodating to SF, paralyses the DUP.”

My own sympathies lie broadly with Feeney’s analysis of the situation and while I do find Kane’s Civic Forum proposal intriguing I also think it is almost certainly doomed to fail. But Kane is right regarding the lack of alternatives. It’s not going to be joint authority, though that is the one option short of reunification not tried yet. It’s not going to be direct rule given that the last time the institutions collapsed the British government did everything it could NOT to rule at all and it’s not going to be a border poll given none of the necessary work for that has been done. Instead, should the institutions collapse, it’s going to be another interminable negotiation ending with another glossy document with a snappy title and a limited shelf life.

Perhaps the Executive parties can heed the warnings of the commentators, our political Cassandras, and avoid all the unpleasantness that seems increasingly to be heading our way?