— thedissenter

Constructive ambiguity has created its very own predictable process. We have seen it, again and again. The period of pretending the issue is just not there. The crisis. The trip to Downing Street, the hard talk, the threats of disaster/breakdown/the end of devolution, the IMC report, the opinion research that just happens to support the… Prime Minister’s visit… Chief Constable’s pennyworth… the deal.

The Ulster Unionists in Fermanagh questioned the proposed co-option of a DUP nominee to replace a recently deceased DUP member of the Council. The point appeared to be a fair one. The Ulster Unionist concern rested on the nominee being a student, studying in Belfast. In a council were votes count, it is not unreasonable to desire a councillor who is more readily available to attend to council duties.

The Ulster Unionist Party and Conservative Party will talk on a more formal basis about the potential for a structured formal relationship at some point in the future.

David Cameron’s timing in the countdown to an election within the next eighteen months is entirely right. Whatever the outcome of the talks that are due to start later in the year, any output from those discussions would be at least a further year or two before anything concrete would be in place. This places the Tories being more than an English party, and a leadership with a Unionist position.

In the end it came down to “7, 11 or 15?” Not a choice between rugby ’7′s, association football or the full union code, rather “how many councils?” At least the new Minister at the Department of the Environment Northern Ireland (DENI) has been spared a Review of Public Administration (RPA) every bit as tedious and uninspiring as its precursors.

When the most recent RPA was first mooted it was sold as the chance of a lifetime to correct the horrendous mess that constitutes the ‘public sector’ in Northern Ireland. With 11 government departments, over 100 quangos, how ever many Commissioners for this and that, and 26 local councils we would have a right to feel a tad over-administered – though poorly governed for all that.

Many balk at the suggestion of a merger of the DUP and UUP into a single party. For most the single biggest issue was the ever present and ever divisive Ian Paisley. With Ian Paisley being the subject of a very internal coup, showing his weakness and irrelevance to the future, the two parties must now look seriously at the prospect of coming together. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, from the DUP perspective. Paisley was pushed. This can be said with some certainty because the reason behind the timing was so fundamentally flawed. How does the replacement of the ‘hard man’ of Ulster politics likely to save the DUP from Tradtiional Unionist Voice (TUV) led by ex-DUP Jim Allister MEP.