Real

Alasdair McDonnell's Irish News interview has gained much attention because of the comments on politicians' pay and pensions.  This has made Alasdair a punch bag for the radio talk shows and allowed internal enemies to come out and attack him.

However, the real problem with the interview is that it has no narrative for the SDLP, Northern Ireland or nationalism.  It listed a range of things he intended to do but they lacked a vision and a coherency.  No one doubts Alasdair's willingness to do work and that is reflected in what he said but activity is not strategy and all he offered in his interview was activity. 

Sour

When I went on Council I wondered whether or not I should blog about Council issues or not (as well as wondering whether or not I had the time to blog but an inability to sleep has resolved both for this evening at least and BTW thanks for voting me 16th best blog when I hadn't blogged in months). 

I've known Belfast city councillors of different parties for the last twenty years or so and was always slightly disturbed by how the often every event in the building was imbued with a significance it often did not have - comments or slights at Council always predicted to have dire electoral consequences when the average voter knew nothing about them.  However, the past week of events on the Council have undoubtedly attracted the attention of the public so I will presume there is some interest on a perspective of what is going on.

The first question is have relationships soured in the Council?  Generally, yes. I was not there in the old days but it is an overstatement to say they are at those levels. 

Why has the situation came about?  It is no accident. Sinn Fein made the conscious decision to do this and for reasons to be examined below Alliance and the SDLP have indulged them.  (The consciousness of the process is made clear by the Duke of Edinburgh awards incident.  It did not come about by an individual or spur of the moment decision by the Lord Mayor but an instruction from further up the hierarchy.) 

A number of months before the election there were significant personnel changes among the Sinn Fein team.  With some discontent simmering on the ground and the growth of the likes of eirigi beginning to unnerve Sinn Fein it was decided part of the solution was to overhaul the Council group and take more strident positions.  The  then group leader, Michael Brown, with whom all groups had created a working relationship, quit as leader and councillor following internal pressure. This new intake included individuals like convicted bomber Jim McVeigh and the return of a figure from a time when relationships where poisonous on the Council, Mairtin O'Muilleoir. 

In the Council elections their growth in seats hid a drop in their vote plus eirigi came from nowhere to take over 2,000 votes in Upper Falls and the intervention of other republican candidates cost them a seat in Lower Falls.  This reinforced their earlier fears and perpetuated them on the path they had commenced.  The perspective of the West is particularly crucial as it drives the Sinn Fein group.

So Sinn Fein had decided to wander about City Hall with its little bag of stink bombs.  Little surprise there as the lessons from the first years of devolution were that without checks and balances and the willingness to use them Sinn Fein would behave in such ways.  However, City Hall has none of those checks and balances (although RPA will change that situation in the next term) but their approach could only be a success if other parties supported it and for their respective reasons they have.  Yet Alliance and the SDLP then wander around complaining about the awful smell in City Hall denying that their own actions had any role.

With the SDLP there are a range of issues symptomatic of the party's broader problems with Sinn Fein.  It has some problems of factionalism.  They have no narrative or strategy of their own, not even a basic counter-strategy, so end up generally as the rabbits in Sinn Fein's headlights.  On occasion they try to outgreen Sinn Fein and fail miserably so tend more often to fall into line.  They also have the core problem that the main means of communicating with their electorate, newspapers, are in the hands of republicanism.  So even if they do score a point of Sinn Fein it doesn't enter the public consciousness. In terms of relationship with others there is much talk but that is where it has so far ended.

With Alliance I will try to err on the side of kindness.  So far the only thing that has been consistent is their inconsistency.  They appear to approach issues with the atittude of a scoreboard - we've given one to them'uns so we'll have to give the other'uns one too.  In this pattern of behaviour there is no consistent vision.  Words may be mouthed but it is not backed up by action.

The flags issue and Christmas signs are cases in point.  In 2004 Alliance voted to retain the present practice of the Union flag flying every day.  Since then the law has not changed neither has there been a employment tribunal challenge to the practice (despite the 2004 advice warning this was a risk) and the practice has become more common in the UK not less.  Yet Alliance agreed to repeat the process and now backing a different position of designated days. 

On Christmas signage in different languages, they opposed an Irish and Ulster-Scots language signs a few months ago then voted the opposite way for a Irish language sign last Thursday.  The only rationale for it seemed to be that earlier in the night they had agreed that the Ormeau Park be used for a Covenant event so were looking to even up the books.  This flip flop also did significant damage to an all party deal.

A range of contentious issues had been drafted and agreed that a diversity panel (including all group leaders) to discuss them intensively over the next few months to see if an agreement could be reached.  Its first meeting was to be the day after the December Council meeting.  Comments in committee made clear that Sinn Fein were somewhat unwilling participants.  This seemed driven by their belief they could get more with their existing strategy rather than through an all-party approach.  Therefore it was unsurprising that  Mairtin O'Muilleior proposal, through its impact on two issues designated for the panel, broke the agreement. 

However, the Alliance and SDLP joined in.  Consciously or unconsiously they had completely undermined the integrity of the agreement for all-party focus on these issues.  It will have also reinforced SF's belief they'll get more outside such a process. 

Perhaps this is a sign of a deeper malaise within Alliance.  IJP has noted a sense of drift in Alliance since the election.  Recent events have also demonstrated a general lack of nerve in Alliance.  The first sign of this was when the First Minister made his Castlereagh speech on integrated education.  When the fall-out began Alliance were notable for their lack of full throated support for something which was supposed to be a central policy.  Lately, the issue of teaching colleges has shown it again.  They say they believe in one college but baulk when it comes to actually moving it forward.

Add in Ford's attempts to remove Prison Service symbols to the Alliance council group's attitude to the Union flag and other memorabilia in City Hall and a picture begins to be painted more fitting of Irish republicanism than Ulster liberalism. So perhaps as with the SDLP these issues are a sign of deeper problems in the wider party.

As regards the immediate future of relationships the core issue will be whether the integrity of the all-party agreement to work together on contentious issues can be restored.

(So there is a backgrounder to the current issues on Belfast City Council.  This is no doubt where you tell me that despite my attempts otherwise I have been sucked into this mini-universe.)

Hornets Nest

While we are all distracted by the big numbers and the consequences it will undoubtedly have for our individual and collective standard of living in the next few years one of our Executive Ministers seems to be playing a largely unnoticed but ultimately dangerous game.  Alex Attwood seems to be dallying with the idea of breaching parity. 

In the Assembly earlier this week he stated:

"My officials are currently conducting an equality impact assessment on to the principle of parity in Northern Ireland. I am not just looking at the individual changes to child benefit or housing benefit, or any of the other proposals that are coming down the tracks, but am beginning to scope the much more fundamental issue of the principle of parity, and whether the principle of parity, as it currently operates, does or does not have equality implications. That is some blue sky thinking and the broader context in which we should consider those matters."

This morning he was talking about how the Osborne announcements of £7bn in welfare cuts would involve £200m taken from benefit claimants here.  However, he went on to imply that the Executive budget process was a means to preventing this.  This fundamentally misrepresents our budget process.  Government expenditure falls under two categories the block grant called Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) and benefits which are Annual Managed Exepnditure (AME). 

The Executive has made one foray in the region of benefits with its one off winter fuel payment.  However, the one-off and small nature of it meant it was permitted and not seen as destructive to the principle of parity.  What Attwood seems to be proposing is well beyond. This would involve a rejection of the principle of parity.  This is the financial equivalent of punching a hornets nest.

It may be mighty tempting to a nationalist minister to destroy Craig's negotiating success with the Treasury in the 1930's.  It might be mighty tempting to a SDLP minister to pick such a fight to up their profile with a nationalist and leftward posturing and increase their relevance to working class republican areas.  It might be a good issue to base an Executive resignation on. 

However, if this path is the one Attwood and the SDLP plan to follow it would only make our budgetary problems worse.

Breakthrough and Ritchie - Updated

I dandered up the Belmont Road this morning to attend the Centre for Social Justice launch of its Breakthrough Northern Ireland report.  CSJ stands apart from pretty much all the other UK think tanks by having representation here and with this trying to tailor its work.

Slugger provides a reasonable summary of the social and economic issues it is seeking to highlight.  In the press blurb it makes the standard no brainer statement about devolution:

“The political system in Northern Ireland, primarily concerned with the necessity of delivering political stability, must begin to provide answers to the severe social problems outlined here, with the aim of reversing intergenerational social breakdown,”

The media has focused upon this but I trust they will remember the term "intergenerational".  Hence, not be queuing up to condemn devolution next March because it hasn't got them solved yet.  Also it is something of a disservice to the work of CSJ to present its approach as "There is a problem, government must do something".  It is more sophisticated than that.

Football, Debates and Polls

A 14 month year old put pay to football and debates this evening. Missing the football turned out to be fortunate (mumbles complaints about general uselessness of Benitez) but got five minutes of the national debate - Cameron seemed to be mimicing Clegg's style from the first debate, Clegg was playing it safe while Brown had even managed to raise his game too.

The pollsters have the second debate much closer than the first with Clegg and Cameron sharing the honours but Labour will take solace in Brown's performance being 'better than expected' (although that was probably from a pretty low expectation base).

Locally Ken Reid has called it for Gerry Adams and Mark Devenport bemoans the lack of polls and worms to help assess impact. The choice of Two Tribes as music was trite. Will the focus on the national debates have engendered more interest in a format which has been more common here for some time?

Keith in Belfast has the post-debate spin from the leaders themselves - Peter Robinson, Reg Empey, Gerry Adams, Margaret Ritchie - although the very close camera angle is a little too close for comfort.

While others debated, dissidents launched a gun and bomb attack on Newtownhamilton police station.

Car Crash Part II

After climbing out of the wreckage of the car crash of their PEB it seemed someone at SDLP HQ thought having a second was just what they needed. "Let's use the arse corner of a warehouse with bare breeze block walls, dodgy seats and next to no room for the media to launch a positive vision for the future. The building was opened by John Hume you know."

Sinn Fein backs McDonnell in South Belfast

It's been reported that Sinn Fein have withdrawn Alex Maskey in South Belfast. How does McDonnell feel about this Shinner endorsement? With Sir Reg Empey not responding to yesterday's call to agree a Unionist Unity candidate, for South Belfast to return to Unionism we are looking at the second option outlined yesterday at the DUP manifesto launch:

"If no arrangements are made by the close of nominations tomorrow then it will be for the voters to decide...In South Belfast I call on those voters who believe in unionist unity to recognise the DUP’s substantial, sincere and repeated efforts to achieve an agreed candidate and to vote for Jimmy Spratt who is the only unionist who can win."

Today's announcement crystallises that situation.

What a car crash

I realise PEB's in Northern Ireland will never be leading the way in political communication so alright is as good as you can aim for and at least avoid a car crash. The SDLP PEB has managed a multiple pile-up blocking all lanes. Visually, Margaret Ritchie chose a Catholic Cathedral as her main backdrop while talking about a shared future (nice outreach when needing Unionist tactical voting in two constituencies) and then switched to multiple ever changing boxes that distracted from the voice-over. After that we had Dolores Kelly acting like a rabbit in the headlights but that was fine when comapred with the wooden re-enactments of the Reservoir dog scene of men (and some women) in suits walking down the street (with red ties popular). Also it got disastrously overtaken by events, the section where candidates spoke culminated with Declan O'Loan and others standing outside Palace Barracks angrily demanding security powers be returned to Irish hands - on the same day the Real IRA bomb it, ouch!