Patrick Murphy: Welcome to New Labour and its New English vocabulary

It used to be the Americans who arrived here full of blarney. You know the sort of thing: what wonderful people we are, how much they think of us and how we have a special place in their hearts.

Now the British bring the blarney. Keir Starmer came this week, not bearing gifts, but armed with a new vocabulary, which was littered with fine words like “constructive”, “positive” and “productive”.

Indeed, he thinks so much of us (almost as much as Joe Biden) that he intends to “reset the relationship” between London and Belfast.

The Stormont parties loved it. Sinn Féin said he was as different from the Tories as “daylight and dark”. The DUP indicated they trusted him (they also trusted Boris Johnson, but we’ll not mention that) and the SDLP lost the run of themselves a bit when they said “This seems like a new dawn”. (For their homework, the SDLP should write an essay explaining the difference between optimism and naivety.)

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In fairness you tend to get a better class of adjective from Starmer than Sunak, but beyond that, it is hard to find significant differences in their policies.

Welcome to the world of dictionary politics, where New Labour has planted a New English political vocabulary in Ireland.

It is a language which makes no provision for mentioning the 550,000 people on our NHS waiting lists, 35% of whom have been waiting more than two years for treatment. The comparable figure for England is less than 1%.

That’s because New English contains no words for Stormont’s lack of accountability. We live in the political equivalent of the dark side of the moon, where no rational light ever shines and where the two biggest sectarian parties are guaranteed power without responsibility.

That is the inevitable result of the Good Friday Agreement’s system of government in which politics will always be sectarian and thus unaccountable. Starmer boasted that his was the party of the GFA. The Stormont parties smiled in agreement – and sure why wouldn’t they?

We cannot be sure how many of those who die while on our hospital waiting lists would have survived if they had received timely medical treatment. However, it is possible that Stormont’s negligence may have caused more deaths than the Troubles. By arguing over flags, Stormont is exercising its own form of Legacy Act on those NHS deaths.

Ironically, the societies with which both sides claim they want unity do not actually exist.

The chocolate box Britain which unionists love is a myth, romanticised, for example, by John Major’s reference to “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist”.

This week’s annual fixation with bonfires, sectarian marches and beating a big drum is what unionists call British culture and what the British regard as a peculiarly Irish form of advanced Morris-dancing.

Nationalism’s perception of Dublin is far removed from what many there refer to as “Nordies”. That’s us. “Boggers” are those living in the south beyond Dublin. (Brendan Behan joked that those who lived beyond the Red Cow Inn in south Dublin ate their young.)

The fetish for union with either Dublin or London absolves Stormont from its responsibilities. The Executive still has no programme for government and no plan for Lough Neagh.

The fetish for union with either Dublin or London absolves Stormont from its responsibilities. The Executive still has no programme for government and no plan for Lough Neagh

Starmer knows (from Sue Gray) that additional money will not produce improved outcomes. He also knows that no matter how poor public services become here, Sinn Féin and the DUP will still be elected. So he will press Stormont to raise money locally.

Sinn Féin has begun preparing us to be charged more for poorer services. Michelle O’Neill has made several references to the need for “fiscal levers”, meaning money-raising powers. (No doubt, across the rolling countryside of east Tyrone, people gather at the crossroads of a summer’s evening talking about little else.)

So Starmer can be confident that two conservative parties will always be elected to keep us loyal to his foreign policy of British support for the US and Nato. Provided we do not invite the Russians in, Starmer will not mind how Stormont behaves.

Stormont says it needs another £3 billion. In response, Starmer offered three adjectives. That’s about £1 billion per word, which illustrates that New English not only guarantees good public relations, it is also a remarkably cost effective language.

So expect a tsunami of adjectives from across the Irish Sea. However, if you want more money for Stormont, you will need to speak fluent Tyrone and ask for fiscal levers.