Jeff Peel's Diary

I can’t recall a time when the pointlessness and ridiculousness of Northern Ireland politics came into sharper relief than yesterday after yet more ill-fated crisis talks at Hillsborough Castle.  Our politics were never exactly sophisticated – but yesterday were a master study in folly and absurdity.

There is no national clamour for devolution of policing and justice.  The general public has next to no interest in this academic attainment.  Most don’t even know what either means or entails.  Some, I suppose, appreciate that there is something in the Agreement that requires both achieved and that there is a crisis as a result.  Therefore the desire to see completion is so that “that lot at Stormont” might shut up.  It’s an annoying political contrivance that bores.  It’s also one that will result in more significant wastage of public funds.

Yesterday our rag-bag collection of political under-achievers failed again.  While the semi-interested public gaze was upon them they conformed to type and retrenched into the sectarian rat-holes from whence they came.  The DUP produced an uber-bunny of obfuscation i.e. Orange parades.  And hence elderly bowler-hatted men with a penchant for walking up and down streets were allowed to scupper progress.

I have no idea what the prognosis is for politics here.  If further proof were needed that our party-political system needs removed and replaced with secular based politics then I have no earthly idea what that proof might be.  Our politicians inhabit another place and time if they believe that how they operate even approximates to what passes for politics in any other democratic society. 

In the short term policing and justice arrangements should remain as they are with an interim agreement to defer devolution for another 5 years.  The two governments should mandate this.  It’s clear that our politicians are incapable of reaching consensus on such matters. 

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if, over that five year period, the absurd power-sharing arrangements that mandate consensus from tribal power blocs be dismantled?  We need to see the emergence of voluntary coalitions in Stormont – based on shared ideological values rather than pointless tribal affiliations.  In the short term that may only be achieved by banning party affiliations and having all-independent candidates that are willing to make our Assembly work. 

Let’s attract real talent.  Let’s remove the stigma associated with political office – namely the need to designate as one tribe or another.  The politics of Protestant and Catholic have failed at Stormont.  If we must have devolution let’s put in place real democracy where people decide.