A year ago, the late Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin stood down as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister in a dispute about the role of the DUP first minister, Arlene Foster, in a failed renewable energy scheme. In doing so he brought to an end Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government after a decade of working. One year on, the power-sharing institutions remain mothballed. This shared political failure receives scant attention in British domestic politics. That must change.
Every attempt to revive the institutions has so far failed. Talks have foundered on issues like the Irish language and same-sex marriage. Two sets of elections, one for the Northern Ireland assembly and the other for the Westminster parliament, have come and gone. The former Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire was about to start a fresh round of talks this month. On Monday, however, he resigned on grounds of ill health. Talks are now on hold. Agreement on restarting devolved government is far off.
The new Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, will be judged above all by whether she can help to undo this logjam. This is a tall order. The logjam is not her fault. Time will be needed for her to master her new brief and exert her influence. But the priority of the task cannot be doubted. The clock is ticking. The lack of progress is a scandal.
Part of the explanation is that responsibility for Northern Ireland’s political stasis is very widely shared. Both sides in the province inevitably blame the other. Sinn Féin charges that the DUP’s pact with the Conservatives at Westminster means Mrs Foster has no incentive to revive the institutions. The DUP says Sinn Féin has ceased to care about making the Northern Ireland institutions work since Mr McGuinness’s death. Everything has been further complicated by unresolved east-west and north-south tensions over Brexit. A shabby video insulting the victims of a 1976 IRA massacre, posted by a crass Sinn Féin MP last week, has added to the divide that Ms Bradley and her Irish counterparts must overcome.
In three months’ time it will be 20 years since the Troubles were brought to an end by the Good Friday agreement. Translating that deal into peaceful power sharing took time. It remains an outstanding model of historic compromise, giving unionists security of status within the UK and nationalists full rights and equality in Northern Ireland.
The agreement is a rock for the province and a beacon to ethnically and nationally divided societies around the world. Yet British politics is in danger of allowing the agreement to falter through neglect. A generation has grown up in politics that no longer thinks much about Northern Ireland or, by extension, British-Irish relations either. The reckless treatment of the border issue in the Brexit talks embodies the failure. Mrs May also exemplifies it in her DUP deal, her tin ear for nationalist sensitivities when she talks of the Belfast, not Good Friday, agreement, and in her failure to grip the Northern Ireland issues as other prime ministers have done. She spends too little time in Ireland. She needs to get stuck in alongside the Irish government. She is a co-guarantor of the deal, not a cheerleader for one side.
Northern Ireland must not drift further into de facto direct rule. It faces a real and present funding crisis on many fronts, including health, education, policing, infrastructure and troubles legacy issues. Its parties should not sit back and permit this. Its people should not tolerate the parties’ small-minded mutual cynicism. Ms Bradley must show her mettle, get a grip, and ensure that power-sharing is back in business in time for April’s 20th anniversary of the peace agreement.
