Gregory Campbell has said that it will be a number of years yet before we successfully devolve justice powers to Northern Ireland.
Martin McGuinness has said that there will be severe political consequences if there isn’t a date for devolution before Christmas (which is funny, considering earlier this month they voted down an SDLP motion calling for just that – but we’ll park that).
I suppose this is the definition of a stalemate really. Just like everything else in the DUP/SF dominated Executive at the minute.
It’s quite obvious that Peter Robinson is having internal difficulties with his own party, the Dodds and Campbells and the like. While he needed, and was quite content I should add, to use them to get what he wanted (the top job), he is now faced with an internal power struggle against those very people he needed to oust Paisley. Hence Campbell putting down a maker.
Add that to the fact that Robinson knows that the best method of challenging the TUV is to go to the electorate with a record of delivery, delivery that is noticeable and that makes a difference to the general public. Something he is failing to do.
So he has turned to blaming the institutions for those failures. He claims that they are not designed to deliver fast or work properly. What he fails to mention though is that the ‘mutual veto’ (the mechanism holding everything up) is the mechanism that he negotiated at St. Andrew’s and that his party and Sinn Fein were happy with. Attacking the institutions is so transparent and pretty weak from the leader of the largest party.
On the one hand, the TUV are breathing down his neck and on the other SF are holding up progress (equal to the DUP, on different issues). To blame the system and not address the issues in his own party he will soon find to be a flawed strategy.
People are beyond the point of accepting the argument that “it’s the system, not us” and just want value for money and delivery from their government. The fact is, this is the system these parties wanted and they are both culpable for the failure to deliver. The institutions work, it’s the dominant parties running them that don’t.
We all know that. Change of tactic for Mr Robinson I would presume.
Matt, agree whole heartedly. Northern politics is in a rut in my opinion. It’s just like an arranged marriage- husband and wife hating each other. Both accept they should have a child cos the family want it. However, they cannot agree on shen said child should arrive.
There had to be a better way of forming an administration. What’s your alternative?
The system set up under the Good Friday Agreement would be my preferred alternative