After a few hours of shocked silence from Sinn Féin on Monday Gerry Adams’s ambivalent response to the DUP-Conservative deal indicated that the party would go back into a Stormont executive, the only question was when.
The deal is horribly bad for Sinn Féin so they decided to split hairs, ignore the bad bits and concentrate on the extra money.
The only consolation is that the extra money can’t be spent without Sinn Féin’s agreement. Reading the annexe to the deal it’s a moot point whether any money would be released if there was no executive since it’s repeatedly stated that the money will be given to ‘the Northern Ireland Executive’.
On the other hand if it came to direct rule the DUP would have an inordinate influence on the British government through the co-ordination committee the Conservatives and DUP have agreed. There’s a meaningless sentence at the end of that paragraph which says the Northern Ireland secretary will not sit on this committee. In the case of the present incumbent how would you know if he did?
It’s an academic point anyway. The British government is in clear breach of their obligation to ‘rigorous impartiality’ with this deal and in any case, whoever is proconsul will be copied into the minutes of the committee. Besides, Conservative MPs on the committee will keep any proconsul abreast of what’s being discussed. This co-ordination committee is an astonishing unprecedented formalised arrangement giving the DUP a position of power where they can decide the order of all legislation in Parliament. Never before outside a formal coalition has such an arrangement existed with a party outside government, even during Jim Callaghan’s dog days in 1978-9 or during the Lib-Lab pact of the same era.
No doubt Sinn Féin will say the deal is purely a matter between the DUP and the Conservative Party and there’s nothing they can do about it. Significantly the only sections Gerry Adams indicated Sinn Féin would oppose was the promise to implement the military covenant in the north and the preferential treatment indicated for security force personnel in legacy plans because apart from allocation of finances those are the only sections which a northern executive could have any control over.
Indeed, despite the carefully worded nod to the Good Friday Agreement both those proposals are a serious breach of the Agreement. Introducing the military covenant would require taking back that element of devolution to Westminster and secondly would breach section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act on equality by giving preferential treatment in housing and health care to former soldiers. Since so few nationalists are former soldiers it flies in the face of equality never mind ‘rigorous impartiality’ but of course that’s out the window.
You might note that ‘both parties [the DUP and Conservative Party] adhere fully to their respective commitments’ in the GFA but only the ‘Conservative Party reiterates its steadfast support’ for the GFA and commits to ‘close cooperation with the Irish government’. The DUP has never supported the Good Friday Agreement or cooperation with Dublin.
It’s also a matter of concern that the DUP will automatically support the Conservatives in their eight Brexit bills despite the majority of people here voting against Brexit. Again Sinn Féin will say there’s nothing they can do about that: it’s between the DUP and the Conservatives.
Now that’s what we know. What we don’t know is what has been agreed tacitly. Anyone who believes that the written deal is all there is is a naïve fool. It’s a biased deal as you can see because the only infrastructure mentioned is the York Street Interchange and of course it’s just coincidence it’s in Depooty Dawd’s constituency. No mention of the A5 or A6.
It will be years before all the grubby little side deals emerge from the co-ordinating committee. That was the case in the desperate days of Callaghan’s government in 1978-9. Publicly the major deal then was giving five extra Westminster seats to the north but behind the Speaker’s chair all sorts of dirty wee local plots were hatched with Ulster Unionists.
It’s a shocking state of affairs and Sinn Féin need to be careful not to be tainted by playing a bit part in it.
