If Stormont does not return imminently, direct rule is needed while talking begins on what comes next – Newton Emerson

Does indirect rule still have any rules?

Speaking outside Hillsborough Castle on Monday, Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris said he could not increase public sector pay because that is a devolved matter. This was correct – but he seems to be the only person who still cares.

All five main Stormont parties had just trooped into the castle, one by one, to tell him to increase pay by ‘decoupling’ it from other issues. All the smaller parties, from the TUV to People Before Profit, have issued statements demanding the same. None have mentioned this would also decouple it from devolution.

When pay for nurses could not be increased in 2019, during the last collapse of devolution, trade unions focused on calling for Stormont to be restored, implicitly criticising Sinn Féin and the DUP. This time, unions have blamed the secretary of state and declined to get involved in party politics.

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The trigger for this was Heaton-Harris including £600 million to settle pay disputes in last month’s financial offer to restore Stormont. This enabled unions and parties to say he had conceded the money was available, so it was cruel not to hand it out.

Perhaps – but that would still be a breach of devolution. Nor was it much of a revelation that cash was on the table: everyone knew a financial package was coming in 2019 as well.

The main difference between now and then is that the secretary of state’s hapless pressure tactics have made him a convenient cross-community target. Almost as a side-effect, the parties have signalled a consensus that pay awards can be rubber-stamped through by the Northern Ireland Office without unionists or nationalists denouncing it as Westminster interference.

When did each party decide this and by what consistent rationale? Although the pay issue is serious and connected to other major problems, it is hardly unique on that score. If the NIO must step in and fix this problem, why not others?

Indirect rule may be preposterous, with rules that were made up on the hoof. Nevertheless, it has rules and they have been more strictly observed than is often realised.

If Stormont does not return imminently, Northern Ireland should not be kept in limbo for redundant reasons. Direct rule should be instituted, in deed if not in name, while talking begins on what comes next

The approach that evolved from the outset in 2017 was for the NIO to keep passing emergency Stormont budgets and postponing assembly elections, while leaving all other devolved tasks to civil servants operating from policies left by the outgoing executive. A myth has since built up within unionism that Westminster bypassed devolution multiple times to deliver nationalist demands, specifically on same-sex marriage, abortion and an Irish language act.

In reality, Labour backbenchers forced through the legislation on abortion and same-sex marriage, against protracted government resistance. The language legislation was passed in 2022 with Stormont’s agreement, although it was introduced several weeks after the assembly collapsed.

If there was a moment when the government gratuitously poked the DUP with a devolved stick, it was when Westminster passed regulations last June to update Northern Ireland’s sex education curriculum. Heaton-Harris said he was legally obliged to do this under the same UN report that backbenchers had used to force the issue of abortion. Although that was true, legalising abortion was an urgent recommendation in the report. Curriculum changes were on a list of non-urgent recommendations, including “adopt a strategy to combat gender-based stereotypes regarding women’s primary role as mothers”.

As the secretary of state has yet to issue an order demoting motherhood, he may have acted on the curriculum with unnecessary haste. In any case, this was a minor transgression compared to every Stormont party demanding his intervention on public sector pay. If no party wants indirect rule, who does?

The strange limbo of indirect rule arose due to two particular features of devolution’s last collapse. Sinn Féin did not want to be accused of simply handing power back to London by walking out of Stormont, so it kicked up a fuss against ‘British-only direct rule’. This was endorsed by the SDLP and Dublin amid a toxic Brexit atmosphere, creating a nationalist consensus the government could not ignore. Six months into the collapse, the Tories required a confidence and supply deal with the DUP to stay in office, making direct rule genuinely problematic.

These circumstances no longer apply. If Stormont does not return imminently, Northern Ireland should not be kept in limbo for redundant reasons. Direct rule should be instituted, in deed if not in name, while talking begins on what comes next.