Lydia Talks To... Ian James Parsley on the Northern Ireland Elections (or not...)

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me. This is a shorter version of the Lydia Talks To Podcast to get a grip on a current news story- the elections in Northern Ireland. Or not, as the case may be. We thought last Friday that Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton Harris was going to call an election since the deadline to restore a power sharing government had passed. But he then didn’t.

Last year I talked in depth with Ian James Parsley about the Northern Ireland Protocol. Ian, it should be noted is a member of the Alliance Party and married to an Alliance Member of Assembly. But I go back to him again and again because he’s a level head and has a knack for nuance and bringing in the context, which as you know is so important to me.

Apologies for the sound quality on some of this audio- that whirring in the background is my ancient laptop. Still working on improving those recording skills! Luckily we hear mostly from Ian and his sound is better.

[START of Interview]

Lydia: I'm talking again to Ian James Parsley, thank you for being at my "level head" that I talk to about Northern Irish politics.

Just to set the scene, we're now at the stage where Northern Ireland hasn't had a government since February.

We had elections in July that returned Sinn Fein as the largest party for the first time ever, which was a big deal for Northern Ireland historically.

But the DUP refused to go into power sharing because of the Northern Ireland protocol.

So we are still in a position where there's no government.

And Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris announced that there would be elections called because that's the legal requirement, with the deadline for power sharing having passed.

But he declined to set a date for the election on Friday. So what is going on?

Ian: So the background of this, first of all, it is worth saying is that back in 2017, we were in a similar position.

But one thing that did change last Friday is we even lost our ministers.

So though, as you say, we didn't have a government. We did actually have ministers in the department working on what you might essentially call an interim basis. But it meant that members of the Assembly could ask written questions.It meant that there were still ministers there to take decisions.

But actually, as of Friday, even that's changed and there are no ministers at all.

That used to be the case immediately upon elections in Northern Ireland. And the irony, I suppose, is that it was the DUP who pushed for that to be changed when Sinn Fein brought down the institutions in 2017 because they felt that a period without ministers was too much to go off.

It's common across Europe for there to be interim ministers after an election.

Lydia: As Belgium did of course during their long period without government.

Ian: Yes,and there are lots of cases we could do a whole piece on that alone, but the point is is not around that changed, but they were given essentially six months, slightly less actually.

So that brought us to last Friday morning as the date when a cutoff occurred.

So as a Friday, we have no ministers either, so we're back exactly where we were in 2017 from that point of view.

And that's why the system then says, well, you have to hold an election and the Secretary of State has twelve weeks. Under the current law you should have less than that actually, but now it has twelve

weeks, which would take us to the 19th January.

Something which had thrown people is that the current Secretary of State had been very definitive that at 1 minute past midnight he would call an election.

He said that to the Northern Select Committee in Westminster and he had also been clearly trailing the 15 December as a potential date.

Lydia: Yeah, I'd heard that,

Ian: to the extent that the Electoral Office had been sending out notices to schools and so on,preparing them for that date, obviously because it would interfere with Nativity place and all that sort of thing.

So on Friday he came out and made the announcement as expected. Except the announcement wasn't the announcement that was expected, at least not by people who took him exactly at his word.

And there are a number of reasons being given for this.

Had he been overruled by the Prime Minister? RTE ran that one.

I think that's very unlikely personally.

Lydia: I mean I haven't heard anything from Sunak on this topic at all. I mean I think he's head down in the treasury from everything that I can gather at the moment.

Ian: Firstly, that would be my view and secondly, Therese Coffey had actually said that morning that there would be an election, so another cabinet minister was under the impression there would be one, as far as they thought about it at all.

So that leaves us with two possibilities. One, that this was essentially a deliberate ruse to try to get the DUP to restart the executive.

The DUP is the party which is refusing to take up its positions and the peculiarity of Northern Ireland's situation is that if either of the large party refuses to take up a position that's were Sinn Fein were in 2017 is where the DUP are now, then you don't have any positions taken up.

In fact, DUP even refused to nominate a speaker, so the Assembly wasn't operating properly, so the press and I think one option is this was a ruse to try to put the pressure on the DUP and it didn't work.

The DUP said, well, we're probably not going to win an election, but if there is one, we'll probably have the same number of seats and it doesn't really make any difference.

Lydia: Yeah, I mean this is the thing that I kind of having another election where even if Siin Fein returned more seats, my understanding is that you have to have two, because of power sharing.

You have to have the first Minister be the smaller party sorry, the first Minister be the larger party and the Deputy Minister of the smaller party. But even if they were significantly smaller, they'd still be part of that arrangement. And so you're not actually getting anything out of an election in a way that that would alter the scenario, say in Westminster.

Ian: That's exactly right, the election wouldn't change anything.

And so that brings us to the second scenario, that the Secretary of State was relatively new to the position.

I mean we forget how quickly this has all happened, but he was appointed by Liz Truss and it clearly wasn't the first choice of the time. The number of names seem to have refused it.

He came in, obviously you come in and you read through the papers and you see that the laws you have to call an election in twelve weeks and you maybe decide that's the law and that's the way it is.

But Chris Heaton Harris had certainly been told by numerous party leaders in Northern Ireland, election was not only pointless, but actually worse than pointless. It would be very divisive.

Many people viewing this will remember that the crocodile comment?

Lydia: No, I'm not aware of the crocodile comment.

Ian: Arlene Foster during the campaign in 2017 when we did have a snap election, talked about crocodiles, that it's like crocodiles that always come back for more.

And this really caused nationalists to come out very quick, much higher turnout than they'd had in previous elections and was why Sinn Fein came within a few hundreds, hundreds of votes and certain constituencies of winning that election.

And so. What happens is elections are by their nature divisive and the last thing we do is further division.

Lydia: There's a lot of comment going around about how much it would cost, but it would cost 6 million election.

A lot of people have been paid for doing no work, essentially.

Of course, one of the other things that my understanding is not having a government and maybe it's been different, but when you've had ministers but one of the big issues is always budgets and where the budget is going to stalemate and you can't actually get anything done and money runs out or you're effectively running on credit while there's nothing happening.

So there's a big money element to it.

Ian: Yes, there are two aspects of that. Obviously there's a lot of irritation that MLAs are being paid for.

Some people would say no work, that isn't actually fair. They are doing some work.

In fact, it's generally accepted that most of an MLA's work, which is the same as an MP, is actually consistency work. And one of the arguments against an election is the last thing you want is MLA's working against each other rather than for their constituents at this moment. They can still work on behalf of their constituents and of course they could still ask ministerial questions and they could still attend all party groups and they could still do certain things.

Now I think that we've reached the stage where it is impossible to argue for maintaining full pay and nobody is seriously arguing that because now they really can't do the legislative part of their job. And it's generally accepted that that's about a third actually. And that was the case before and probably be the case again.

But actually the main issue, frankly for the public is that you don't have budgets. And particularly when you're coming into an energy and economic crisis, what you can't do easily is shuffle money between governments because you have no budget.

So although departmental budgets operate, as you will know, in effect at 95% of what they were the previous year, that's a departmental budget.

But if you decide you need more money for health because the health service is going to come on particular pressure at this time because of the crisis, or you decide you need particularly more money for the Department for the Economy, which also covers energy here in Northern Ireland, you don't have that potential.

You can't do that. The money can't be shifted.

So departments are operating off previous budgets and then there are big decisions you might want to make that you can't make without an executive here because anything that is a crosscutting or regionally significant nature requires an executive.

So that is, I think, much bigger practical issues that people out there are facing going into the winter without budgets and decisions being made.

Really thinking about the economic crisis that is to come. You're sort of on autopilot in a situation which isn't automatic,

Lydia: but the reality is actually going to hit people personally in a way that sometimes the political conversation misses. Where do we go from here? What are the options? If the DUP is digging its heels in, an election is not going to cut it, what's left?

Obviously, the big thing, which I don't really want to go into too deeply is the protocol.

But what are the routes? What are the sensible routes? Is there a landing ground?

Ian: One of the big questions here is, is it the protocol, actually? And that will depend on who you speak to.

There is a lot of argument about that, because there are others who would say, no, it isn't the protocol.

It is that the DUP would have to appoint a deputy first minister at the time of a Sinn Fein First minister.

Lydia: Yes. which we know they don't want to do and don't like.

Ian: Yep. And there are people who will say, that's crude sectarianism, and up to a point, that might be right.

They'll talk about a nationalist first minister and they don't want a nationalist first minister.

There are people, it has to be said, in Northern Ireland, who would be extremely concerned by Sinn Fein first minister. There are a lot of victims of terrorism still living who really would see that as a gross injustice.

So it isn't totally true to say that it's only sectarianism, although that it's up to people to judge what part that plays in it.

There are concerns, but we've overcome these before, there used to be concerns about the Sinn Fein lord mayor. Now that happens every two or three years and nobody thinks about it.

They used to be concerned about Sinn Fein ministers and they're commonplace and nobody thinks about it.

It's probably a hurdle that we just have to get over together.

And it has to be said that Sinn Fein did itself no harm in its response to the death of Her Majesty the Queen. It's perceived that it handled that rather well. So there certainly have been things ongoing.

There was an outrageous attack on an Orange Hall earlier this week. There have been some, the usual sort of stupid, sectarian niggle that's been going on here, I'm afraid that passes for public comment on occasions, and that's very frustrating.

Maybe it's harder. We just have to overcome the DUP in fairness to it and you have to go, I suppose, with what it says. 'We'll say, no, that's not the issue. It is the protocol,' and I suspect we're about to find out.

What, of course, the DUP never does is clarify exactly what it means by resolving the protocol. It does say, or as leader Sir Jeffrey Johnson does say, that it means either a deal with the EU or the passage completely of the protocol bill.

Lydia: Before this all happened, while Theresa may keep calling her Theresa May..  while Liz Truss was Prime Minister,

Ian: (laughing) there's so many of them...

Lydia: That was ages ago for goodness sake!

But there was some vague optimism that there was a landing ground on the protocol. Simon Coveney was talking about it and it was tentative and it was delicate and there was some there was also Steve Baker being in the Northern Ireland office and him saying, oh, I've actually been completely wrong on this and I apologise, which was kind of interesting.

I mean, not sure I could trust him, find a throw him in some ways, but also there have been some movements on this. I mean, again, I don't want to go too deeply into it, but I'd be interested in your viewpoint on whether you think that landing ground ever existed is still there, could be found again to find a realistic way through it.

Ian: I think there is a landing ground and I think there's a landing ground that many people in the DUP would tolerate, let's use that word.

But there is another big problem with Northern politics and actually in some ways it's replicated at UK level. And that is there's a sort of more extreme element of unionism and the DUP needs to learn to accept that that extreme element will always be on them.

This is what the Ulster Unionists went through when they did the agreement in the first place and they always have the extreme element pushing them.

The DUP has the same element of people who just won't accept any deal whatsoever. And ultimately this was the issue. It's the reason I sort of raised that crocodiles comment.

The issue with it is that there is still a perception that anything that is done that happens to be what nationalists want or prefer is seen as being 'given'. And nationalists, indeed non- unionists, in fact, regard that as outrageous because they are equal partners in Northern Ireland.

So why would they be 'given' anything? If they advocate for something and they get it, they're not being 'given' it. They have it as a result of their democratic mandate.

So there is still that perception of unionists 'giving' things that have never really been dealt with.

Even with the census figures suggesting that there are now more people of Catholic background, than Protestant background, and that the electorate will soon consist of more people... and so on and so forth, there's still this underlying majoritarianism which hasn't really been tackled.

So that's the problem. The problem with the protocol. The obvious landing ground is you don't do very many checks at the ports, you actually do them literally in the shops and things like that. That's the obvious landing ground.

Or you have certain channels where things that are meant for the Republic of Ireland go through and things are meant to Northern Ireland and then checked within Northern Ireland. These things can be managed probably not as easily as just doing them at the ports, quite honestly, but they can be managed and ways can be found.

But your risk is that at each stage you then have another barrier intentionally put up by the more extreme elements. 'There must be no rule at all for the European Court of justice' or something like that.

They'll come up with something every single time, and that then feeds back to, what is this really about the protocol, or is it actually?

Lydia: There are quite a lot of topics I'm thinking about at the moment where you have a real gap, a physical gap, a logistics gap, compared to the political gap. And actually the political gap is always the bigger one to cross.

And I think that's really helpful for kind of reminding us of some of the issues.

And of course, I will point people back to our previous discussion on the protocol, the many details on that, and talking about one thing I remember you talking about is we're not talking about two things.

We're talking about at least three things at the same time.

We talk about sectarianism and populations and communities and so on.

Thank you so much. That was really helpful and certainly really helped me.

Ian: No problem. The one thing I would throw in again is that the Secretary of State in Northern Ireland always has options.

So we have this idea, the law says twelve weeks, he can change the law. That's not difficult. It's happened before.

Lydia: Yeah. And we've seen that happen lots of times recently.

Ian: Yes. And the big thing that now is being talked about probably more than ever, is reforming the institutions themselves. You don't have this blockage.  That if the party chooses not to take its position it can go into opposition but it can't just block the whole operation.

That in itself will probably be a pressure rather than something the Secretary of State intends to do imminently but bluntly it is something that will have to happen one day. So that's another element of this as we go through the next few weeks.

[END of Interview]

Ian James Parsley there. So that’s it from this short episode. If you enjoyed this or want more you can find the deeper diver I did with Ian on the Northern Ireland Protocol. You can find that with my other podcasts. If you want to rate the podcast or share it with friends and family, that’s always welcome too. You can find me on Instagram @lovely_._lydia or email me writetolovelylydia@outlook.com . Thanks for listening.