The following article by John Molloy was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
AFTER the newly appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had his first meeting with the local Executive Party leaders, Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy stated that "the British government can't coast along, and neither can Dublin…in the hope that things will be better on the other side. They need to engage now". This statement provoked some predictable exchanges between the "partners in Government" but failed to provoke much sense of unease among the wider population or genuine sense of imminent crisis. In addition, as recent opinion polling has suggested there is a weariness and lack of enthusiasm about devolution actually mattering in practice, even in the context of the Executive failing to set a budget, and decisions reverting to Senior Civil Servants.
The reason for this of course is that when people ask, "haven't we been here before?" the answers are "of course" and "often." In addition, the Unionist Parties in particular, barely half way through this mandate were looking to the next elections in 2027 with the list of electoral barrel-scraping "not an inch" positions they would present to their voters to "save them" from whatever bogeyman they assess will play best at that time.
The continuation of such grimly tedious party politics doesn't mean that there isn't a genuine crisis at the heart of this debate. While the restoration of the institutions in 2024 was accompanied by the usual statements from the local Parties of the need for "a budget to secure stability" and UK Government announcing (usually re-cycled) funding promises as new money, there was a complete political failure on behalf of the Parties to secure the financial settlement that was needed. The question of a "fair" funding model for the North has been kicked around policy circles for years – as far back as the temporary "Barnett formula" being extended to Northern Ireland in 1979 yet even if a magic figure was decided upon (in terms of what a needs-based mark-up of English public spending should be), this fails to address how much money is needed to repair the negligence that preceded such a model's commencement.
This figure would constitute the Peace Dividend that never came. The Parties may be accused of crying wolf on the eve of an election, but what the revisiting of that cliché sometimes ignores is that in the fable, after the boy's "fake news" repeated warnings, there was a wolf.
This menace, in the real corridors of power in Whitehall, not the cosplay of Stormont, enjoys devolution's advantage of off-loading responsibility from where it actually lies, the UK Treasury, to local politicians who are accused of receiving enough to "do the job" and failing to do so. Given that post-Burnham's installation, the British Establishment now regards "the North" as somewhere (Manchester) over 200 miles south of the Scottish border, ignorance and indifference beyond the imperial heartland outwit their strategic needs (greater EU alignment/NATO encroachment's dilution of Ireland's neutrality) are a given. With each of the devolved parliaments/assembly's now led by Parties advocating a break with the Union, what better sport, aided by a Unionist state broadcaster, for a UK Government, run by and for the 'state within a state' of the City of London, to point to dysfunction and/or corruption as a sign of the Celtic natives "not being really up to it."
This is a continuing attempt to diminish any mood for real constitutional change. The question then is how the progressive forces that led to the Good Friday Agreement, revisit whether potential still exists within it and examine how this might be advanced to combat such demoralisation. Similarly, if a crisis is triggered this side of scheduled elections, how do we publicise a list of demands that ensure that the restoration/establishment of a new Assembly only happens with the guarantee of appropriate future funding and a Peace Dividend for public services that deals with the real crises in our society.