Opinion

Last six weeks all about unionist grandstanding

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

First minister Peter Robinson outlines his party's reasons for ending its 'in-out' policy at Stormont. Picture by Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press
First minister Peter Robinson outlines his party's reasons for ending its 'in-out' policy at Stormont. Picture by Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press First minister Peter Robinson outlines his party's reasons for ending its 'in-out' policy at Stormont. Picture by Mark Marlow/Pacemaker Press

For just under an hour after secretary of state Theresa Villiers presented the paramilitary assessment panel’s report to the Commons, it seemed that Stormont was in real trouble. How could the DUP go back into government if all the IRA’s structures still exist and IRA members “believe” the army council runs Sinn Fein? Yet suddenly Peter Robinson and his ministers were back at their desks and smiling for photographs, with no explanation bar a press release too convoluted to have been written in an hour, claiming they had been vindicated by the release of Sinn Fein national chairperson Bobby Storey - which took place the day after the hokey-cokey resignations began. So what had the last six weeks been about? Internal unionist grandstanding is the answer and the first lesson to be taken from recent events is that British patience with that has completely run out.

**

Patience with Sinn Fein doubletalk is also wearing thin, as the panel’s report has abandoned all pretence of Sinn Fein and the IRA being separate organisations. This overturns the key 2008 Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report designed to smooth the devolution of policing and justice. That report, based on the same intelligence methods and sources as this week’s report, claimed the army council was “no longer operational and functional” and all other IRA structures were “being allowed to wither away.” Instead, it seems the peace process’s ‘constructive ambiguity’ will wither away first. It may take a little longer to wiither in the Republic, where a related Garda intelligence report this week cited the same 2008 IMC findings that MI5 and the PSNI had just thrown in the bin.

**

Short and serious though it was, the panel report found time for a moment of levity. The reference to IRA members supporting Sinn Fein through “activity like electioneering and leafleting” looked suspiciously like a joke - at Sinn Fein and the DUP’s expense.

**

A DUP return to Stormont means a return of the Stormont House talks, which the UUP has promptly threatened to leave. Emerging from the first session, chaired by Theresa Villiers and Irish foreign minister Charlie Flanagan, Mike Nesbitt complained he had been told off then ignored after trying to raise the issue of the IRA army council three times. He even quoted Villiers as telling him his question was “not appropriate” and Flanagan as telling him it was “less then positive”. Despite making quite a good joke comparing the talks to the ‘don’t mention the war’ episode of Fawlty Towers, detailing the contempt of your peers is a strange approach for any political leader to take - especially in negotiations.

**

Canadian-owned oil and gas firm Rathlin Energy has pulled out of Northern Ireland because it is fed up waiting for planning decisions on test boreholes. Opinion is sharply divided on energy projects but on one point everyone can agree. If firms did not have to wait years for unpredictable and endlessly appealed approvals or rejections, they could spare themselves and everyone else a lot of time, money and grief. The point was further made this week when the electricity regulator warned that work must start on the long-delayed north-south interconnector next year to avoid power cuts by 2019. Elsewhere, the rejection of a waste incinerator near Mallusk is to be appealed, while everyone forgets this is only happening in Mallusk because an ideal site in Belfast was blocked by councillors despite planning approval in 2009. Even when Stormont is working, this system is broken.

**

ITV’s acquisition of UTV’s television channels was reported by BBC Northern Ireland business editor John Campbell almost half an hour before the story appeared on the UTV website. So UTV was scooped on its own sale.

**

A Chinese reality show with an audience of 280 million has been filming at locations around Northern Ireland. I Supermodel has based its latest series in London and although producers are coy about what brought them to Belfast it seems clear that a Titanic-themed episode is in the works. Hastings Hotels, Visit Belfast and the Belfast Telegraph have all praised the tourist potential, with 150 times our population dreaming romantically of our shores. There is just one problem. When Chinese people consider a visit to Europe they discover that a single visa gets them into every country except the UK and Ireland, which require separate paperwork. So they all go to Paris instead.

**

It is a good wind that blows nobody any ill. The Republic’s growth rate has started to sky rocket, with GDP up a remarkable 6.5 per cent year-on-year. This is very bad news for Sinn Fein, which has spent almost a decade positioning itself between Irish Labour and the fringe left to ride an ‘anti-austerity’ wave into office - incidentally consigning Stormont to welfare reform deadlock. The party’s latest southern billboard slogans - “delivering a fair recovery” and “better off with Sinn Fein” - suggest this phase of the struggle is now over.

newton@irishnews.com