THE North’s current crisis is averted – for the moment at least.
ut the latest political fix, which saves power-sharing for now, does not engender confidence in the Northern Ireland’s very messed-up politics and fragile peace – all of 23 years after the brave new dawn of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Edwin Poots’s Democratic Unionist Party has escaped an early Stormont election and a pretty certain electoral defeat.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has agreed to legislate in London to give legal protections to the Irish language. London politicians will now do a job their Belfast protégés cannot manage and the creaky apparatus will struggle on.
After the DUP had crudely ousted Arlene Foster from the party leadership, she finally quit as the North’s First Minister at 1pm on Monday. By rule, the two main parties – DUP and Sinn Féin – had until 1pm next Monday to put the power-sharing apparatus back together.
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The Belfast government posts are interlinked. So, to make things work, Sinn Féin have to renominate their Deputy First Minister, Michelle O’Neill, so that the DUP can put in their pick for First Minister, Paul Givan.
Failure to do that by the Monday deadline meant another election – very probably in the autumn.
Sinn Féin’s price for cooperating was delivery by the DUP on promised legal rights for the Irish language. DUP leader Edwin Poots said he had more urgent priorities, like health and the post-Covid-19 economy, so he would not guarantee doing this in the lifespan of the current Belfast parliament which is due to expire next May.
Sinn Féin rightly pointed out that the DUP agreed to Irish language rights as far back as the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, which finally brought Ian Paisley’s party into the peace process. That DUP pledge was renewed in January 2020 in a deal which revived power sharing after a two-year gap.
The promised Irish language legislation could be balanced with guarantees for other, more British cultural manifestations. These include protection for Ulster Scots, a dialect best known from Scottish poet Robert Burns, author of works as diverse as Auld Lang Syne and the Kildare county anthem, The Curragh of Kildare.
The DUP has allowed recognition for Irish develop into something of a monster among hardline unionists. In reality, what is proposed has happened long ago elsewhere in the UK, notably in Wales and also to a lesser degree in Cornwall and Scotland.
The political benefit of this deal is that it spares the new DUP leader the ordeal of trying to convince his restive party that he really did get rid of Arlene Foster to cave in to Sinn Féin demands on the Irish language. At the same time, it gives the Sinn Féin side cover to nominate a Deputy First Minister and prevent the collapse of power sharing.
There are many other ironies. One is that this intrusion by the London government into the North’s devolved affairs was actually sought by Sinn Féin – the ones who want to sever all links with Britain.
Another is that London’s interference is condemned by some hardline unionists. Their central reason for existence is maintaining links with Britain.
Sums up the whole crock really.