All the ingredients were there: the crisis, the Prime Ministers, the big house, the Belfast Telegraph survey, the Parties doing all night sittings and the press pack.  At the end of all that we have the “Agreement at Hillsborough Castle” as it is officially described.  Not a deal.  Not “The Hillsborough Castle Agreement”.  Nothing definitive, just ‘agreement’ as part of a step process. Same process as the “Agreement at St Andrews‘.

Many are of course delighted that there was any sort of agreement at all.  Especially Gordon Brown who would undoubtedly not wish one of New Labour’s great projects to crash just before a Westminster election, and probably David Cameron who will not inherit an immediate crisis should he become Prime Minister after the General Election.  

 The ‘Agreement at Hillsborough’ amounts to very little but a process that revolves around progress towards the devolution of Policing & Justice.  The only certainty is that there is a date assigned for the transfer of Policing and Justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly. That date appears to be conditional on a range of other points/matters/actions happening in some sort of sequence.

What are the chances of the agreement working out to a conclusion?  The Agreement is in five parts.

Section One provides a date for the devolution of Policing and Justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly.  There are a series of procedural steps which, so long as Gordon Brown does not call an election in the next few weeks should see the formal transfer of powers by 12 April. 

Section Two is Parades. It is hard to see how Sinn Fein will ever accept that people lawfully and peacefully should not be subject to the sectarian harassment of unlawful violent protest, or a planned protest which lacks the discipline to behave in a civilised manner. The pursuit of cultural apartheid through designation of Protestant-free zones seems to underline republican demonisation of the Loyal Orders. Hard to see how Republicans will ever agree to a shared future when they are unable to countenance sharing a stretch of road a few times a year; not that many in the SDLP are more tolerant.

Section Three is a clever device to sideline the UUP and SDLP.  The problems with the functionality of the Executive lie in the institutional arrangements; the Executive seeks to enforce consensus among a disparate group of political parties which, leaving aside their constitutional pre-dispositions, have little in common. Section Three is not likely to amount to much more than the generation of a whinge list, but is disconnected to the issue of the devolution of Policing and Justice, and therefore is of little immediate consequence.

Section Four outlines no more than just an administrative catch-up process.  As with Section Three this is not timetabled and therefore may well be forgotten about unless there is a need to show something of progress – even if it is only seeing the Executive finally get round to doing what it ought to have already done, which if they were able to agree they would have done already.

Section Five is timetabled, and suggests that the Junior Ministers will be exceptionally busy. Not only are they putting a progress and action plan together for outstanding Executive business (Section Four), they will also be doing a report on outstanding issues from the St Andrews Agreement.  The most recent Policing and Justice ‘crisis’ has arisen from a very different determination what is meant by in paragraph 7 of the Agreement at St Andrews : “It is our view that implementation of the agreement published today should be sufficient to build the community confidence necessary for the Assembly to request the devolution of criminal justice and policing from the British Government by May 2008.” If there is failure to even agree on what was agreed then, what presently constitutes an ‘outstanding matter’ may well be a challenge in itself.

The fanfare for this ‘agreement’ is worthy of a snake oil salesmen’s convention. Agreed, tentatively and with provisos, is a date for the devolution of Policing and Justice.  That is it. The DUP has allowed the issue of ‘community confidence’ to focus on the parades issue, but that is just one area where confidence in the Stormont administration is weak.  Lack of accountability, the chimera of collective responsibility and absent democratic counterbalance of effective opposition are fundamentals that appear not to have been discussed at Hillsborough, yet are underlying factors in the lack of unionist confidence in Stormont generally.

Sectioning parades hides the real fear of devolution of Policing and Justice with respect to that issue: Section One (9), that a future Minister could take a decision by request or otherwise, to step in to ban a parade without recourse to the Executive. Given the history of the generation of parades contention by Sinn Fein, the pattern is set.  With the Justice Minister open to d’Hondt in the next Assembly the ground is set for a heightening of conflict centred on parades, whoever gets the Justice Ministry. 

The quasi-judicial powers of the Justice Minister is the ticking time-bomb on parades. More immediately, the parades fuse is lit on this ‘Agreement’. Ashdown wasn’t even close to a credible alternative to the Parades Commission. Serious questions on the process within that ‘interim’ report remain unanswered; yet that ‘report’ is noted as a start point on which to build.  

The Hillsborough talks have demonstrated that the DUP is as useless as the UUP at negotiation: the lead-up to Hillsborough was promising, but the end result is a big disappointment.  The DUP blinked, and Sinn Fein is now piling on the pressure on parades, upping the ante and making resolution on parades nigh on impossible: the most recent outburst from Martin McGuinness is an example.  More generally, the remarks by Pat Doherty point to a longer term process of attrition; building on the undermining of cultural identity and political confidence within the broad unionist electorate.   

Sinn Fein has its date for devolution of Policing and Justice.  Once in process, how many believe there will be much concluded of Sections Two, Three, Four and Five without another ‘crisis’.

By any measure, unionist community confidence in the ‘Agreement at Hillsborough’ is at best low.  The text of the published document was printed in newspapers and is readily available online as a document and subject of comment. The success of the snake oil salesman is in the ignorance and credulity of the buying public.  To presume that somehow the lack of confidence can be solved by wider publication is erroneous. 

Parades may be an obvious point of contention in this ‘Agreement’, but fundamentally the real issue is a lack of confidence in the institutions themselves into which Policing and Justice is to be devolved.  Broadly speaking, the unionist community has little desire for more snake oil from the huckster’s store, no matter how many times the bottle is rebranded ‘new & improved’.

For broad analysis on the state of the individual unionist parties by far the best has been that of the blogger Turgon on SluggerOToole.  The recent meeting at Hatfield House between the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Owen Patterson, and leading representatives of the DUP and UUP has created a great deal of debate on the nirvana of ‘unionist unity’. We are told the Hatfield House talks were about the UUP and DUP, and Conservatives, gaining some greater understanding in respect of future elections. Generally, however, the impact of the host party (the Conservatives) on elections is not discussed in detail. Perhaps this is because the Conservatives and the UUP are treated as one: that is a mistake; they remain two parties. Such a perspective misses the electoral questions arising from the Conservative and UUP non-merger.

Should an Assembly election to be held before Westminster elections there would be four Unionist parties in the fray as there is no agreement for Assembly elections between the UUP and Conservatives.  This would probably kill any prospect of the UUP being the largest Unionist party: the two are separate parties as we are constantly told, so they will be two separate Assembly Parties.

So too may the Conservatives. Without an arrangement with the UUP for Assembly elections the local party would rightly expect to stand, and win a few seats. But the strength of the Conservative offer is that it brings so much more to local politics than money to a party (the UUP) whose financial fortunes are much diminished. Conservative electoral strength would be exposed before the benefit of the ‘win’ at Westminster (and even one seat other than North Down will be a win, so the bar is low). The Conservatives would lose momentum.

Conversely of course the arrangement for the General Election will mean that the Conservatives who might get elected in Northern Ireland will be fully taking the Conservative whip as part of that Party, while the UUP will be taking the whip by agreement. So if, and only by example, the UUP/Con arrangement delivers four seats and two of those are Conservative it means the UUP has in effect only two seats at Westminster. Influence with the Conservative Party is thus diminished, and independence constrained by taking the Conservative Whip. Added to which the UUP has provided an electoral base for the Conservatives to make further gains in the next elections on the calendar (Assembly), and in much better shape to eat into the UUP vote than if it had no Westmnister seats in Northern Ireland. This further dmininishes UUP ambitions of regaining ground to the DUP as the largest Assembly Party.

If Westminster elections are first, in the context of a hung Parliament the two main unionist parties would be in a much stronger position with no pre-agreement with the Conservative Party. Obligations generated prior to the election severely restrain the capacity for the unionist parties to play their best hand.

It is hard to see how strategists within the DUP would not have anticipated these scenarios, or that the UUP could be so detached as to not even think about them.

Which is why any notion of talks at Hatfield being on ‘unity’ needs to be treated with caution. There can be no doubt that the Conservatives as a Party would have been fishing for DUP ideas on the future and specifically for indicators on what would happen in the event of a hung Parliament. The DUP would be similarly probing the Conservatives. The only thing on the Conservative leadership’s mind at the moment is ‘seats’. This gives the unionist parties a strong position prior to the election, or it would if the UUP was not already tied to the Conservatives.

All this speculation centres on considerations of electoral mathematics that only the timings/outcomes of the elections will prove. If a Westminster election is first, and if the Conservatives gain a majority of anything over 30 then both unionist parties will be largely irrelevant, and Northern Ireland as far down the agenda as events will allow. Which means short-term interest may be Westminster, but for Unionism there must be greater focus on Stormont.

That brings us to wider speculation of other talks and fevered speculation on any perceived signals that build on this story. Within the context of all of the above, a merger of the UUP and DUP is by far the more likely and electorally sensible in terms of unionist ‘unity’, particularly in respect of the Assembly elections.  The same sort of issues arise. This would have to be a merger and not a pact, because it is about Party and not political designation in d’Hondt. It is the largest Party that takes the First Minister role.  Something less would be enough to extract maximum value from a hung Parliament, where ten to twelve Unionist seats represent the difference. Timing will be everything.

There is a definite sense that something is stirring among unionists in Northern Ireland. It may be an interesting political Spring. Will it be a new Spring for Unionism?

Does anyone seriously suggest that Iris Robinson would have told Peter Robinson all the details about her £5,000 kick-back, or her intention at some point to keep substantially more. The meetings, the go-between, the texts? Dishonesty underlies this story at every level.

Peter Robinson would not be the first husband who wanted to believe and protect his wife, or chose what to believe at face value because it offered a pathway to quiet resolution of the issues at hand: especially when the wife has a history of depression.

Any investigation may well find Peter Robinson clear of wrong-doing; unless there are more revelations to come. The only person who might be able to tell the whole story is Iris Robinson, and we have learned enough to imagine that not even she may not be he most reliable source of information on the facts.

The big question is now political: can Peter Robinson survive as First Minister?

If the answer was based on known facts alone, then more than likely yes.

However, leadership demands that any showing of emotional vulnerability must be balanced with strength and resolution in the face of adversity. Leaders must be first in control of themselves to be in control of events, and to be able to respond appropriately and proportionally.

While emotional vulnerability may elicit some public sympathy, alone it promotes context not answers. A managed interview that is not accompanied with a detailed Q&A for the press which addresses wider issues that a short statement and the immediacy of a ‘surprise’ statement does not permit, questions will always remain. Each subsequent interview with Peter Robinson offers a snippet more that leaves a sense that there is more to the story even though not a great deal more is revealed.

Talk of the ‘Robinson brand’ in the media seems to be centred on the relative power of the Robinson family; relating that family’s political position in the context of the Paisley family, and discussion of dynasties.  There may be a common idea of how the Robinsons regarded themselves, and there is no doubt that many in the DUP have huge respect for Robinson’s political antenna and drive. But out there, among the public, is there anything that has happened over the past year, from expenses to more recent revelations, that doesn’t confirm a reserved and quietly negative view of the Robinsons?  Was there really broad public acceptance of the presentation of the happy family, the dedication to public service alone, the righteousness of evangelical faith?

There has never been a great deal of goodwill or natural empathy towards Peter Robinson the person, outside his core supporters. Politically he stood in the shadow of Ian Paisley for so long that he had no particular personality: the succession to leadership was easily interpreted as a powerplay within the DUP. That was true without the recent scandal.

Politics is never black or white. Even if Peter Robinson were a weakened leader, he is the only option for the DUP at this point in time. The DUP needs Peter Robinson because he has the political experience and tactical expertise to make them do better at the polls in Westminster and the next Assembly and elections than they would without him. He keeps the lid on the tensions between the fundamentalist core DUP and those who would fundamentally seek to appeal to a wider voting base. For a Party that promotes itself on success, changing a leader so soon after Ian Paisley’s retirement could only question the direction and political sense of the DUP.  What vision? What values? What next?

Yes, recent events may mean bleeding a few more votes, but poor results could still be even worse without rigourous political management from now to election day. Yes, expenses and the more recent scandal has hurt the DUP. Yet, if a week is long time in politics Peter Robinson has plenty of time to reorganise, re-energise and rebound.

If there were more scandal, from elsewhere within the DUP, then the challenge for the DUP would be greater, and Peter Robinson’s return even more certain. For now though, it’s his decision; one man’s call, and the man doesn’t look as if he is going anywhere far from the First Minister’s office.

Picture: parliament.uk picture gallery

The opinion polls are erratic, as discussed on thedissenter earlier, and the potential for a tightly hung Parliament is real. A party holding a small number of seats may gain considerable importance.  So the performance of local parties is of national interest: though notional until the counts are complete.

thedissenter will resist entering a seat by seat analysis: that has been undertaken elsewhere, and there is sure to be more before the date of the election is finally announced.  At this point, selection of candidates is far from complete.  There are a number of factors which have the potential to impact on turnout and final count, and this post will look at those rather than enter fanciful prediction as others have done.

Most probably there will be two elections, again, in Northern Ireland – a nationalist one and a unionist one. There may be movements on the margins, but nothing of importance.  The greatest impact on the final count is most likely going to be the polling strength of the TUV and the way in which that Party’s presence, or not, affects the electoral balance in each constituency.

There is little on the horizon that is likely to impact on the Sinn Fein vote. Some might wishfully suggest that the woeful media management around family matters might wound Gerry Adams, and by association, Sinn Fein. Suzanne Breen spelled out the case in the Tribune.  Liam Clarke lays out the questions that linger in the Sunday Times.  Yet morality is hardly an issue for the Sinn Fein voter, happy to support a Party that has ‘yet to renounce its history of violence and terror, makes the vast majority of people here, sick to their stomachs’: that would be a majority of the total population, but it seems not the ‘nationalist’ population.

Of course things might change if there was a credible nationalist alternative to Sinn Fein, but there is not.

Republicans who hold onto their Marxist socialism etc, those who abide by the ‘physical force’ tradition, or those who hold onto both, are too small in number to have an electoral impact at this time.  Even so it seems likely that there will only be a marginal, though inconsequential, shrinkage of support for Sinn Fein, if not on a matter of morals then perhaps on the other issues within the Republican family which rumble along.

The SDLP is going through a prolonged leadership contest. If the contest is not inspiring, it is because the choice holds little promise. One has built a reputation on being hard on Loyalist paramilitaries (albeit without due care to Ministerial responsibilities) and making ignorant remarks about the Loyal Orders.  The other has proved adept at building on political opportunity in retaining his seat and building a strong and respected SDLP presence in South Belfast. Neither has excelled outside their respective constituencies.

Whether a harder nationalist line or greater organizational capacity, rural nationalism or metropolitan social democracy, is chosen by the SDLP, the May (or even March) election will give little time for a new leader to make much of a mark on the political landscape.  Bar opening statements of intent, the leadership contest seems entirely internal and lacking much rigour.

The SDLP will most probably hold its own in the coming election; not least because while it has little to offer by way of alternative to Sinn Fein, Sinn Fein is not in a place where it is able to build on past success and bury the SDLP. For now, the nationalist electorate is offered stale crusty policy from both parties which will result in a stalemate within that electorate.

There is a range of factors that make the election of much greater importance to Unionism.  The Westminster expenses story has exercised the Unionist community to a far greater extent that it has within nationalism. Movies, the “Swish Family Robinson” headline, and a perception that Unionist politicians are more likely to employ family members combined to offend a Unionist sensibility that  politicians are elected to serve their constituents’ interests and not their own self-interest.

To some extent the expenses issue gave the TUV’s Jim Allister his barn storming result at the European election in June 2009 – though DUP arrogance and UUP delusion probably played far a greater part.  Whether or not the residue of this debate continues to undermine current MPs is something to consider, but would be only one factor of many in determining constituency outcomes. Some of the heat of the expenses row will be removed by sitting MPs, such as Iris Robinson, not standing again.

The debate within Unionism of ‘unity’ candidates usefully detracts from the lack of any discernable policy that makes the Conservative/UUP electoral arrangements any great force for change in the forthcoming election.  It is hard to believe that any serious unionist politician would believe that not taking an opportunity to defeat a Sinn Fein candidate (as might present itself in Fermanagh South Tyrone) will play well with the wider unionist electorate.  Realistically it is only in Fermanagh South Tyrone that any agreement has the possibility of returning a Unionist candidate.  However, the Conservative commitment to stand in every constituency in the UK means it has no time for local sensibilities and no strategy or apparent interest in inflicting a loss on Sinn Fein.

In South Belfast there is little UUP constituency infrastructure to conduct a substantial canvas – and the Assembly poll showed little chance of an Ulster Unionist win.  Furthermore the sitting SDLP MP already represents a broadly ‘conservative’ sort of approach, and the Alliance candidate a more PC choice, that undermines any gain the Conservative Party would hope to achieve from the Catholic electorate in the constituency – not that the Conservative/UUP hierarchies would be so calculatingly sectarian in their final selection.

By far the largest impact on the election will the issue of multi-mandates, or double-jobbing as it is more commonly described. Of course the legislation to enforce sole mandates must complete its course through Parliament, but already the principle has had consequences.  Jeffrey Donaldson seems to have chosen Westminster over a Ministerial position in Stormont. Mark Durkan has chosen Westminster and initiated an SDLP Leadership election. Michael McGimpsey has cited commitment to Stormont for not putting his name forward in South Belfast.

More generally, the multi-mandate is more of a challenge for the DUP than the other Parties because it has a more MPs than any other Party.  It will mean new faces entering the political frame.  The DUP has been building profile for a number of their MLAs and Councillors, though perhaps circumstances will now accelerate advancement for a few.  ‘Knowing’ your politician is important. Name recognition makes a big difference at election time.  The DUP has also been hugely effective at building a constituency network. That should stand it in good stead. Its November conference was uplifting and rallied the troops, despite what might be viewed as setbacks in the previous year. The DUP enters the election in an entirely positive frame of mind.

A haphazard constituency presence and aging membership means the Ulster Unionist Party is less than able for this election.  This may be compensated by the Conservative Party’s money and campaigning expertise: though the Conservative Party seems to be overly relying on the newness of its entry into the electoral field to garner excitement around average and fairly unknown personalities. If it were a straight DUP v UUP/Conservative contest then the DUP would race home lengths ahead.

The TUV showing at the European election, with Jim Allister thrusting into the political arena with as good as a third of the unionist vote, fundamentally altered any consideration of future unionist electoral outcomes. Of all the political leaders within Unionism, Jim Allister has the biggest headache.  The has to perform in such a way as to be seen to make an advance on the European success, or make a case for why the performance is comparable.

Maximising the TUV vote would suggest the need to stand in all 18 constituencies. However, 66,000 votes spread across 18 constituencies will not win Westminster seats.  The TUV autumn conference was notable that many of the attendees were stalwart workers who once knocked doors, placed posters, and manned phones for the UUP and DUP in past elections. These are the members with drive and devotion who delivered at the European election, but are best focused rather than spread thinly.

Of course the Ulster Unionist Party and Conservatives are banking on the TUV standing to damage the DUP vote in their favour. But this is not Dromore or the European elections. There will be no transfers available for Westminster.

The TUV has already said it will not stand in Fermanagh South Tyrone or South Belfast, leaving the other parties to look less than able to put unionist interests first and foremost – even suggesting an agreed ‘non-Party’ candidate in Fermanagh South Tyrone. The TUV will not stand in North Belfast. Where there is no chance of a Unionist winning the TUV may stand a candidate to hoover additional votes.  The toughest challenges are of course where a Unionist candidate will win, of one Party or another.

Jim Allister himself has declared his candidacy for North Antrim. East Antrim where he once had a strong base, Lagan Valley and Strangford are obvious targets.  Elsewhere he has the luxury of being able to wait to decide on whether it is worth standing a candidate at all. Failure across many constituencies might reflect poorly on TUV strength, while a win in one or two of the greater certainties will afford huge media attention.

In many seats there will not enough difference between the DUP and UUP canidates to matter which Party is elected, but where a TUV candidate will alter the electoral mathematics a judgment must be made as to whether  the TUV could make a positive difference.

The TUV might also be seen as merely spiteful in engaging in constituencies only to place pressure on the DUP’s sitting MP, especially when TUV support comes from across the unionist spectrum. And why give the UUP/Conservative arrangement a lucky pass? The UUP, and in particular the Conservative Party, will do the TUV no favours, and their joint inflexibility is the greatest reason why Fermanagh South Tyrone will most certainly be retained by Sinn Fein.  Why spread the TUV’s limited resources , only to give the UUP/Conservatives the benefit?

The TUV will most certainly be the election story in 2010, but it is too early to say how the Party will impact on the conduct of the campaign or the result. Failure across many constituencies might reflect poorly on TUV strength, while a win in one or two of the greater certainties will afford huge media attention.

So there will be an election (or two) in 2010. A lot can happen before Election Day. Nothing else is certain.

His analysis of the conflict at the heart of the education debate is that if a clash of ideology over practical pathways to excellence in education. A demonstration of this was well illustrated on the BBC’s ‘The School Report’ (broadcast 9 November) where Sinn Fein’s Caitriona Ruane and Fiona Millar (Alastair Campbell’s partner) shared the same ideological path. Ms Millar’s and Mr Woodward’s inclusion show that the education debate is a national one, and not a new one.

Bob’s speech outlines the case for selection, the failure of the policy and educational theories that are integral to the Sinn Fein, and the liberal educational, approach. For McCartney, quoting Churchill; “Where is the compromise between the Fireman and the Arsonist”?

Perhaps unsurprising for a speech delivered to a Traditional Unionist Voice conference, criticism is almost solely directed towards the DUP as the Party believed to be ready to give up selection in some deal. He said “The real and ultimate issue is this – will the DUP, having sacrificed its principles to obtain power, now surrender selective education to Sinn Fein as the price of retaining power.“

Bob’s belief that the DUP is ready to do a deal seems to be based on the notion that the DUP/Sinn Fein rocky relationship is based on a ‘deal a day’: having done the deal to gain power, the two are now addicted to dealing to retain dominance. Prior to the European election that might well have been a reasonable proposition. Since then there has been less willingness on the part of the DUP to be… willing. On the face of it, the current policing and justice row would also suggest that doing a deal with Sinn Fein is not necessarily a top priority for the DUP.

Oddly, there was no criticism of the UUP and their Conservative friends. Yet it/they are part of a four/five party grouping trying to find a way forward, which includes the SDLP. The SDLP is equally and implacably opposed to selection as is Sinn Fein. So surely any consensus will necessarily undermine selection. Indeed the UUP are so keen to make wider political points about a Sinn Fein/DUP partnership that it is willing to be seen to take a lead with the SDLP, despite the UUP and SDLP approaches to education policy no less diametrically opposed than Sinn Fein/DUP.

A clear and substantial section of those who would send their children to Catholic schools are in direct opposition to the policy of Sinn Fein, SDLP and the Catholic Church. It would seem an ideal opportunity for the UUP to consult with the excellent Michael Gove and discuss innovative and imaginative ideas to help Northern Ireland onto a new pathway to educational reform. Most certainly the UUP and/or the Conservatives could use the education debate to map out a policy that endorses excellence, promotes meritocracy based on open selection, and take leadership on the issue in support of grammar education for all communities, classes and, most of all, children with academic ability. That hasn’t happened.

If the new UUP/Conservative collaboration cannot make progress in establishing leadership in education, bringing something fresh and new to the debate, it is hard to see where else it can stop out from the pack. At this point it would seem that the UUP is equally likely to succumb to the urge to respond to the Belfast Telegraph’s  vacuous campaign to ‘do something’. Doing something, if it is the wrong thing is just as harmful as doing nothing.

While Ruane may well be the ruin of the successful Northern Ireland education system, Sinn Fein is only able to continue because of the inability of any other party to engage with the public. There is a hunger for a dialogue that promotes educational excellence at all levels – building on strengths and addressing the weaknesses. Removing selection tests will not remove the obvious educational underachievement within localities; as much to do with social factors as standards in educational delivery, and at Primary level education int the first instance.

The Education Minister appears to be listening to no-one, and doesn’t really have to – there is no collective responsibility in the Executive and the Assembly clearly has no means of holding the Minister to account. Even if they could hold her to account there is not an ‘opposition’ with a credible alternative to deal with the educational underachievement that is being used to attack selection. Even if there were an Assembly selection next year would education be a big electoral issue; would it result in the removal of the Minister, or a change in the Party taking the Ministry?

Bob’s speech is a good piece of analysis, but was lost in the TUV conference and in his pointed comments on the DUP. The speech provides a start point for a wider discussion. Yet that is not the reason why Bob’s speech gained little attention. In truth, there is no incentive for political parties in Northern Ireland to offer alternatives, and only a marginal chance of any Party with an alternative winning electorally on the issue and then being able to work through their ideas to implementation.

Discussion on educational policy is reduced to throwing blame around the media and scoring political points at every opportunity. Education may be an issue of huge concern to the electorate, and especially to parents, but a debate on the future way forward hasn’t even started, and the references to frame that debate remain undefined.

Robert McCartney: THE POLITICS OF EDUCATIONAL CHAOS

I have retired from party politics and I am not a member of any Party including this one. What I have to say I would happily have said on a UUP, DUP or any other conference platform.

As the youngest of 8 children from a 2 up 2 down on the Shankill I was the only one to get the benefit of a grammar school education when I sat the very first 11 + in 1948. Thanks to success in that examination I have enjoyed a university, professional and even a political career.

My mission is therefore that children from my social background retain in 2009 the same equality of opportunity that I benefited from 61 years ago. As National Chairman for the UK of the National Grammar Schools Association I have dedicated my remaining years to that objective.

Politically the most burning issue in Northern Ireland is education. Why? First because electorally it affects the parents of every school aged child; second because the economic and cultural future of our children will be shaped by it; and third because the political and national identity of a community can be changed by it.

What, you may ask, is the essential purpose of an educational system? The answer demonstrates the basic conflict between those who support a selective or differentiated system and those who would destroy it. The first believe that the function of education is to provide every child regardless of class, social status, religion or ethnic origin with an equal opportunity to attend a school best suited to realising that child’s potential. The second view education as a means of advancing some political policy or ideology in which schools are viewed as the machinery for social engineering to achieve a political goal. This is a Marxist philosophy.

The principle of selection, which was supported by some 64% of Northern Ireland’s parent’s means finding out a child’s aptitudes and matching that to a school, that is appropriate. This requires some form of test, which every child has an equal opportunity to sit. Selection and the grammar schools system are generally favoured by the Unionist community and the parties claiming to represent that community. The opponents of selection including the Labour Left, Sinn Fein, and so-called progressive educationalists favour a comprehensive system based on an all ability intake.

The purely educational debate divested of its political content has proved beyond argument that a selective system produces far better results both at G.C.S.E. and Advanced levels than Comprehensive education. Moreover, the Grammar and Secondary modern schools in Northern Ireland are providing greater upward social mobility than their Comprehensive mainland counterparts.

What the Labour Left and Sinn Fein have in common is the political goal of destroying what they perceive as the social and cultural base of their opponents. Education for them is a political and ideological weapon. Under the guise of educational reform and with the help of alleged progressive educationalists, Labour Governments have used education in the belief that it can solve social and economic problems. Instead, it has merely exacerbated and reduced the life opportunities of the disadvantaged classes by creating a large proportion of “bog standard Comprehensives” and a manifest deterioration of educational standards. Instead of increasing the upward mobility of the lower classes, it has reduced it.

What the pro-Union parties clearly do not appreciate is the extent of Sinn Fein’s long-term strategy to destroy the political and cultural identity of the Unionist community through the medium of the educational system. It is no accident that Sinn Fein has always made education its first choice. Indeed, its spokesman, John O’Dowd, has stated that Sinn Fein will continue to do so in the future.

For over a decade Sinn Fein in tandem with Labour governments has put in place educational arrangements that, if not changed, will make the destruction of the principle of selection and with it the Grammar schools well nigh inevitable. An educational system that has manifestly failed in the United States and is presently failing on the U. K. mainland is being forced upon Northern Ireland, not because it is educationally best, but because it serves the political objectives of those who support it.

The ongoing failure of the major pro-Union parties to recognise the dangers of this Sinn Fein strategy and to effectively counter it at every stage is a recurring feature of the present educational chaos. Could this failure be caused by their desire not to confront Sinn Fein on an issue that might provoke the collapse of the Assembly?

The present mess is the product of three major educational reports; those of Gallagher, Burns, and Costello. The membership of all three was heavily loaded with anti-selection members and advisers. Costello recommended a curriculum, reducing traditional subject based teaching in favour of a progressive approach advised by C.C.E.A., a government funded agency headed by one Gavin Boyd and dedicated to the progressive ideas that have comprehensively failed in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany. The proven failures of 60 years ago in America were enshrined in Costello and the Education (N.I.) Order 2006.

A major Sinn Fein/Labour building block was then being put in place with the introduction of a New Curriculum based on previously failed ideas¬; a curriculum which effectively abolishes the capacity to carry out objective testing and is opposed to traditional subject based learning (like science, history, maths, geography) had been established. Its objective was to nullify the ability to select and thereby make the survival of the Grammar school and subject based learning untenable.

Before the parties went to St. Andrews in October 2006 Sinn Fein had already provided for the slow death of both the means and the principle of selection and with them the future viability of the Grammar school ethos.

Let me now turn to primary level teaching; the first steps in education are taken at primary school level and here the Sinn Fein strategy was to allege that the small number of children in disadvantaged areas getting grammar school places from Protestant primaries in North Belfast was due to the selection process. These children had, in fact, been subjected to a pilot scheme farcically entitled “Enriched Curriculum”. Research has shown that far from improving their literacy and numeracy, it had worsened their results.

The poor results had, as one teacher pointed out, nothing to do with selection, but was due to a failure of the primary education sector allied to social deprivation, lack of parental interest, support, and discipline, among other factors. If 5,000 children each year were leaving primary schools with problems in literacy and 4,700 in numeracy, how could they possibly gain success in an objective selection test?

Indeed the vast majority of the children in North Belfast primary’s were not even being entered for the 11 + and therefore could not possibly get to a grammar school place.

Despite the failure of the Enriched Curriculum for primary schools, it was repackaged as the Foundation Curriculum and rolled out across the Province. This programme is contrary to all recent research on the teaching of reading and I have little doubt that the number of children with inadequate reading and counting skills will continue to increase. However, since the results of the Curriculum will not be evaluated for many years, those responsible for the impending disaster will by then have left the scene of the crime.

At the post primary school level the Sinn Fein decision to abolish the 11+ without any viable alternative has provoked the present crisis.

Catholic and non-Catholic grammar schools have provided their own unregulated tests in the face of the public demand from parents for Grammar school education. Of course for children to successfully pass such tests they must have obtained an appropriate level of reading and numeracy. This has placed the Department of Education in a quandary. On the one hand it is charged with improving such standards, but on the other it has introduced a Foundation Curriculum, which is designed to be un-testable. How therefore can one determine whether standards of literacy or numeracy are improving?

The manner in which the Department has attempted to solve this paradox has been a catalogue of failure. First, there was to be a pupil profile on assessment by teachers designed to assist parents in determining appropriate schools for their child’s ability. This proved a complete failure. Parents had no idea of their child’s progress relative to its peers. The assessments were such bland statements as to be meaningless.

Under parent protest the profile was repackaged as an annual assessment in years 4 to 7 at the beginning of each year and a hybrid form of Computer Adaptive Testing (I.N.C.A.S.) provided by C.E.M. Durham University at vast expense was attached to give it the appearance of technological effectiveness. In fact, in recent weeks, a succession of failures in this form of assessment has been acknowledged. Children are not tested to determine what they have learned, but are theoretically assessed to determine areas of strength and weakness to be addressed over the next year.

By providing a primary school Curriculum that is designed to be un-testable, Sinn Fein is ensuring that no form of selection, which indicates a school suitable for the child’s ability, is possible, because no information of an objective kind such as a test result will be available.

Only the revolt of a number of primary schools, which, at the instigation of parents, declared that they will ignore the Curriculum and teach with a test in view, has enabled the Grammar Schools to provide tests, albeit unregulated one. How far the Schools Inspectorate, acting as “educational police”, will successfully enforce the Department’s Curriculum by disciplining those schools has yet to be seen.

The pro-Union and pro-selection parties, if they are to deliver on the assurances they gave on the selective principle issue both before and after St. Andrews, will have to realise that they are being out-thought by Sinn Fein and are being slowly pushed into a compromise that will end with the destruction of a Grammar School system which is producing results the envy of the rest of the United Kingdom.

The well intentioned but naive campaign of the Belfast Telegraph calling upon “The Politicians” to “sort it out” in some form of compromise ignores entirely that there are principles of education that are not amenable to compromise, particularly when one side is not educationally but politically driven. As Churchill once remarked “Where is the compromise between the Fireman and the Arsonist”?

The D.U.P. has already begun the process of abandoning its position. Jeffrey Donaldson, as a member of the Education Committee, endorsed the introduction of the failed “INCAS” system designed to bolster the equally defective “Pupil Profile”.

Having declared opposition to ESA (Education and Skills Authority) headed by Gavin Boyd, the anti-selection architect of the “New Curriculum” the ESA when in place, will have sole control over the whole of education, the DUP are now in the process of accepting it.

The real and ultimate issue is this – will the DUP, having sacrificed its principles to obtain power, now surrender selective education to Sinn Fein as the price of retaining power.

Like the 2007 election it is unlikely its position will be revealed until after the next election.

Remembrance is a way of recalling and respecting the sacrifice of those who had served in two World Wars, and in other conflicts. Remembrance is an act that shows an appreciation of the cost of war, the price of freedom: the value of life and liberty. In that appreciation, wearing a poppy and taking a minute or two of time once a year to pay silent respect is not much to ask, or to give. 

Attending, respecting, an act of Remembrance may well be considered a ‘British’ thing to do. As a child, the focal point of Remembrance was watching the Whitehall parade past the Cenotaph, mainly because those weekends were often spent in the South of Ireland visiting my grandmother who was ill (for years). When in Northern Ireland, there was a simple silence respected in those churches that had a service which was progressing at 11am if the 11th November fell on a Sunday, but with no military connections the day was a ‘national’ event rather than family.  In my early years I was unaware of any family member who had fought in either war – lots of stories about smuggling butter and cloth; though much later I learned of a Great Uncle who had fought and died in World War One.

As ‘The Troubles’ progressed there grew a wider sense of knowing someone, or knowing someone who knew someone who served in the RUC or UDR, full or part-time, or a neighbour who was in the wrong place at the wrong time: touched by the tragedy of the conflict, by death or injury. What difference between those caught in the frontline against terror to those on the frontline against Hitler?  The difference between republican socialist and national socialist is a nuance: it all sounds the same; the Jew, the Protestant, offered the choice of the boat or a box. Remembrance became doubly poignant. Remembrance was no longer something of ‘national’ importance, and distant in time; it became close to home, personal.

The Poppy Appeal is unique in Europe, which makes it a uniquely British tradition in that respect.  With so few visible national traditions the Poppy Appeal therefore takes on the persona of a point of national collective reflection, though in a very British way; it is run by a charity, not by Government; maintained by volunteers, not paid community workers or state officials, and Remembrance is a matter of individual choice.  

Remembrance is for the Fallen, all those countless individuals, not the army that fought.

Remembrance has become a time of personal reflection: remembering friends, family and those who lost through war, through terror, or through conflict of any nature. This past weekend I attended a small Remembrance Service in a country church, where I feel at home.  The names on the Roll of Honour were read as written, carved in stone: those who died in order of rank and those who served in alphabetical order; death and service in war, indiscriminate and classless.  

Remembrance in the British way may be particularly unique. Yes, it may be considered very British to wear a poppy and to pay a moment silence in Remembrance of all those who fought and died for freedom, whatever their colour, religion or politics. It may be very British, though surely it is also a very human way to honour those who served and died for others’ freedom. It is very British, and very right.

Elsewhere, some further thought on Remembrance

The contemporary account of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland is told in the words of British squaddies in Soldiers’ Stories on History Channel. This Remembrance Sunday the programme will be shown at 10pm on HD.  It was shown first on 26^th October, presented by former soldier Ken Harnes.  Throughout operation banner some 300,000 British troops served in Northern Ireland, some 1300 were killed and 6000 wounded.  With the murder of soldiers still making the headlines in 2009 this programme is not entirely the historic record it ought to be.

This is a programme that presents first hand accounts, and although a little long for one programme, it still manages to offer a stark, honest and very personal account of the lives of soldiers serving in Northern Ireland over 40 years.  It provides another perspective that lacks political spin, and doesn’t seek sympathy or accolade.  A frank account, and well worth watching on the night, or keeping for later.

A record of conflict was not available following World War One.  This year the last of the veterans of this war passed on: 108 year-old William Stone, 113 year-old Henry Allingham, and 111 year-old Harry Patch.  It made the short programme of events through the Maiden City Festival all the more relevant.  The ‘Three Cheers for the Derrys!’ programme was based on the book by Gardiner Mitchell of the same name, which had the benefit of reminisces of two old soldiers, Jim Donaghy from Londonderry and Leslie Bell from Moneymore.

Elements of the programme are now available on a dedicated mini website to give voice and life to the story of the ‘The Derrys’, the 10th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The young men who acted in the short performance as part of the programme were no older than those who had gone to war 1914-1918.

Finally, there are those left behind.  Which makes the stories in a new book to be published on Wednesday, Remembrance Day itself, a worthy addition to this selection of means of recalling the sacrifice of the few for the many.  The outline is available in Eamonn Baker’s contribution to ‘The Derrys’ project.  Remembering has grown out of research conducted over the past few years by Trevor Temple, staff member of the North West War Memorial Project. The following is the description of the book provided by Yes Publications for the launch:

“Remembering is a tapestry of stories created from edited interviews with families who lost loved ones during the First World War. Without the generous commitment and openness of all twenty eight interviewees, this book would not have been possible. Each interviewee has shared precious family stories which previously had remained hidden from our collective view.

Many interviewees had researched in loving detail the life and times of their relative. We hear for example of Wesley Maultsaid’s football skills, of Holmes Haslett’s athletic prowess, racing down the Culmore Road ahead of the mail boat on the waters of the Foyle, of Denis Doherty’s working life at McCullagh’s in Waterloo Place and on the docks, of George Hasson “sweeping” around the city. We have been privileged to gain access to the family photographs, documents, keepsakes, memorabilia used to illustrate this publication.

Though all of the interviews were conducted in the spring of 2009, more than ninety years after Armistice Day 1918, it quickly became clear that many of the interviewees were grieving over the loss of their grandfather, grand-uncle, uncle (whom they, of course, had never known personally) in ways which suggested that the family loss had never been fully resolved.”

Remembering was launched in the Tower Museum on Wednesday 11^th November 2009. Books are on sale in local bookshops from 12 November priced £10 or direct from YES! Publications, 10-12 Bishop Street, Londonderry BT48 6PW  www.yespublications.org  This community-based project was developed by Holywell Trust and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

Three very different records of soldiers’ lives and service, each making a contribution to this year’s time of Remembrance, underscoring that Remembrance is often very personal to those who served, their families and friends.  It is hard to really share those memories, those experiences.  But this is a time when we can all respectfully honour those who selflessly acted for us all, regardless though no less aware of the likely cost to themselves.

Electorally, the Conservatives need a substantial swing to ensure a majority. UKPollingReport provides a fun way of keeping in touch with what the latest poll means with a simple swing calculator. A simple exercise on this swingometer shows the volatility of the electorate, and the electoral challenge that faces the Conservatives until May 2010.

This graph was grabbed on the 6th October.

For this example thedissenter  is using the YouGov daily poll (chosen only because this is best suited for the example). You may want to play with numbers from the ICM Guardian monthly polls, or any other of your choice. There will be plenty of opportunity to test the swingometer with the many polls that will appear frequently in the media over the coming months. Using the poll of 6th October provides the Conservatives with a comfortable majority of around  sixty (Con 41, Lab 28, LD 18), just two weeks before the 22nd October poll shows the majority was a less comfortable twenty-four (Con 39, Lab 27, LD 20). The poll on the 22nd showed a very high ‘others’ at 14%.

The strength of ‘others’ is always greater in the aftermath of a European election: when the British electorate seems to enjoy itself by giving one in the eye to Europe and with the other end of the stick one in the eye to the big three established parties. However, the polling of ‘others’ seems to be more resilient this time, and the distance between the European election and the General Election will be less than a year.

It may be that the relative voting strength of ‘others’ at election time that, perhaps for the first time, will be a significant factor in determining the formation of the next Government. For example, the poll on the 22nd October showed a high percentage of ‘others’, but just 2% more for Labour (and less for ‘others’) would have meant that the Conservatives would fall three short of an overall majority. However, 2% for Labour and just one more percentage point for the Conservatives (‘others down 3%) and a majority of twelve is generated for the Tories.

The Conservatives polling is staying stubbornly around the 40%, give or take, rarely allowing for a majority of more than 20 seats, which must be very uncomfortable for Conservative strategists. There is no doubt that a significant percentage of the ‘others’ polling is UKIP, which tends to eat into Conservative votes for the most part; which is why the promise of a referendum on Europe is so important.

While there is no ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the argument that the only Party to offer a referendum is the Conservative Party may be enough to assure that UKIP voters will vote Conservative; UKIP voters having little chance of seeing a UKIP candidate elected and Europe being the only issue they care much about, believing they can win a no campaign.

It is therefore a major question for the Conservative Party as to what the approach will be if Lisbon is ratified before May. As a Treaty, Lisbon would be almost impossible to unravel. While not in power, the Conservatives have little ability to influence the advance of the European project before May 2010. Even if elected, by wandering off with its Teddy Bear from the centre of European dialogue the Conservative Party is unlikely to have sufficient weight to achieve a great deal, or indeed any deal.

Yet without a sufficiently ‘robust’ Conservative approach on Europe for home consumption, and it is far from clear what that could be, the UKIP voter is fickle enough to vote in protest regardless – because to the UKIP voter only Europe matters. While much of the New Labour vote may simply not vote for Labour in 2010, most likely the UKIP vote will go to the polling booths one way or another.

Feedback from the Conservative Party Conference this week has been that there is not the anticipation that there was in the 1996 Labour Conference, when there was a similarly tired and unfocused Government and power seemed within grasp. European policy has added weight in the Conservative election planning because it is abundantly clear from any of the three Party Conferences in recent weeks that there is little chance of offering the electorate a cheerful message of better times ahead. Every vote will count in May 2010.

The difficulty is that while Europe is a factor in securing votes from potential UKIP voters, that same factor makes the Cameron approach to Europe potentially divisive within the Conservative Party. However, thedissenter would expect the prospect of power to outweigh principle for all Conservatives, pre-election, even though whatever the approach adopted should Lisbon be ratified before a British election will need to sound sufficiently antagonistic towards Europe to keep the European sceptic vote on side. Conservative Europhiles will swallow hard and bide their time.

Of course all this is speculation, the swingometer is fun, and the election still some months away. It is, however, abundantly clear that a Conservative majority following a May election is not a certainty at this point in time and there is every chance of a very tight result.

So Europe matters.

So too might Northern Ireland, for once, though not as an election campaign issue.

The Europe factor makes it especially difficult at this point in time to be certain of a Conservative majority in 2010. This may make the couple of seats that may arise from the UCUNF project in Northern Ireland of greater importance to David Cameron than might be generally presumed.

The ‘Others’ and the 18 Northern Ireland seats are generally considered to be part of the opposition against which the pollsters calculate an anticipated majority. Two UCUNF seats could make all the difference between ‘losing’ and the slimmest of majorities. By the same token, so would that block of DUP seats – it would be interesting to see how practical politics would then impact on the Conservative/UUP compact.

Which is why doubts will always hang over what really matters to David Cameron’s Conservative Party. When practicality is the driving force, neither principle nor partnership will be allowed to stand in the way.

The summer interview with Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty by the Economist (below) will not have been welcome in Republican Nationalist circles.

Around 12 minutes in, Ms Chakrabarti says: “I would say to people of faith, and to people who are not of faith, that the one right that none of us should ever have is the right not to be offended”.   

The debate on a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights is in a trough. Unsurprisingly.  Listening to many supporters of a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights brings back memories of the old Eastern Bloc Communists listing rights at conferences to show superiority over western capitalist systems. Of course it was a fantasy that the written and legal rights of the Soviet bloc could ever create wealth or well being. The hell was where such ‘rights’ could also be used to enforce exclusion and a narrow sectarian view of the world where those who questioned such rights were marginalised, at worst to the gulag.

Rights proffered by Republicans and Nationalists (and assorted leftists) are not for the benefit of the people, but as a route to power over others. Thus in the recent Sinn Fein publication on a Shared Future there is apparently objective consideration of rights and responsibilities, eg. “the right to live free from sectarian, racist or any other forms of harassment”, and “Peaceful, inclusive and unthreatening expression of culture and cultures.” At the same time there can be no doubt about the subjective interpretation (which we have heard all too often from Republicans and Nationalists) that systematically demonises Loyal Order processions as triumphal and sectarian, and has a clear outcome of the ability (or right) to exclude or dictate to the Orders on their processional routes. 

The Sinn Fein document is considerably shorter than the OFMDFM working draft (you may need to save the pdf as the link from the DUP page is temperamental).  But then Sinn Fein’s agenda is considerably narrower. Perhaps presuming that the route to adoption of its ‘rights’ agenda is unlikely to be through a Northern Irelands Bill of Rights, Sinn Fein has hit on the idea of creating a process whereby there is official sanction of its narrow sectarian parades agenda: creating areas where Sinn Fein is in a place where it is able to decide whether or not a Loyal Order Parade can walk.  A document on a Shared Future seems an inappropriate place to impose the policy for that process.

It is interesting that dialogue on the accommodation of Parades, first around the Ormeau Road, and more recently around Ardoyne, has never succeeded in identifying the cause or nature of the offence taken by Republicans or Nationalists. Those across the table from the Apprentice Boys of Derry and the North & West Belfast Parades Forum have never isolated the specifics of how a five minute walk by some shops can be of such offence that people feel the urge to violently react; hurling missiles at the participants and police.

Republicans have desperately locked themselves into an parades agenda that first demonised, and then demonised some more, and continues to demonise members of another community that, however different and British, express their culture peaceably and in good order. It would be encouraging to think that Republicans and Nationalists might seek a way out of the parades issue that was a win:win for all. Such opportunities in the past, on Ormeau and in North Belfast, have been passed by.  A win is sought at any cost, regardless of the wider consequences for society.

Instead of taking offence, or sensing grievance, Republicans and Nationalists need to work towards building a shared future. That task, for the foreseeable future, is one that means working for all the people of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom as agreed within the Good Friday Agreement.  Republicans and Nationalists can talk to themselves as long as they like about a United Ireland, but unless they can share a street every now and then there will be little respect for their larger ambitions from within the broad unionist community. Republicans cannot complain of lack of respect in Government when they show such disrespect to the ordinary Protestant on the street. Alternatively, meaningful engagement and commitment to working for a shared future will benefit everyone and earn Republicans the respect they crave.

Jonathan Sacks, as Chief Rabbi, summed up the prize for a society that lives with its differences, which has echoes of Shami’s words:  “In a plural society – all the more in a plural world – each of us has to settle for less than we do when we associate with fellow believers…. Yet what we lose is more than compensated for by the fact that together we are co-architects of a society larger than we can construct on our own, one in which our voice is heard and attended to even if it does not carry the day. Just as community is built on the willingness to let the ‘I’ be shaped by the ‘We’, so society is made by the readiness to let the ‘We’ of our community be constrained by the need to make space for the other communities and their deeply held beliefs.” from The Dignity of Difference, a plea by Jonathan Sacks for tolerance in the age of extremism.

“At one end of the Ardoyne shop fronts a group of people hurled bricks, bottles, and petrol and blast bombs at the police. At the other end of the shop fronts stood another group impatiently waiting for their turn to enter the stage. Neither side was willing to be outdone by the other. Whichever dominates gets to say who does or does not have access to the short stretch of main road in front of some shops.

Both groups are Republicans, both made up of a mixture of local figures and others from further afield, and both believe they have a right to control and grant permission to walk along “their” road. In reality, a power play: desiring the power as to who gets to say no to the Unionists, the Protestants, the enemy; but also, who ‘controls’ the Ardoyne, “their community”.

One banner said “make sectarianism history”, with spokesmen telling us that they don’t want parades along “their” road.  Yet these same spokesmen would condemn those who said they didn’t want ‘them’uns’ in their community. What difference between sectarianism and racism? Fine words of condemnation mask base emotions of hate, exclusion and intolerance.

Both sides believe they represent “Republican” ideals, while both show obvious disrespect for their Protestant neighbours who in the past have been routinely demonised by republicans to challenge policing, and now demonised to gain advantage in an internal republican conflict. The rioting to order, the bus organisation, the empty condemnations and deflection of blame has been seen before – Ormeau being the last example where the majority of those later charged for disorder offences were from outside South Belfast let alone a few streets south of the Ormeau Bridge.

Dialogue is the answer? We’d like to think so. But Ardoyne republicans, said by the Parades Commission to be capable of speaking for the Ardoyne ‘community’, have been engaged in dialogue with the North & West Belfast Parades & Cultural Forum for 3 years! Included in the NWBPCF talks’ team are senior members of the local Apprentice Boys and a District officer of the Orange Order.  The Protestant community of the area is speaking with one voice locally, through the Forum, but who speaks for the Ardoyne?

It is clear that the Republican power-play has little to do with the Ardoyne community.  If dialogue about parades is about accommodation, including tolerance and respect, then perhaps three years of talking should by now have provided everyone with breathing space to move on.  While the Protestant community is demonised and abused, its culture denigrated and diminished on the back of Republican political manoeuvrings, it is the Ardoyne community that suffers while the thugs take over its streets and steal its voice.

Meanwhile, last Monday evening, less than a hundred yards from the Ardoyne shops Protestants stood patiently in Twaddell and Hesketh waiting for the homecoming parade of local Lodges.  Once the PSNI escorted the parade up the road, the Protestant community went home peacefully.

There is a lot of talk of ‘respect’, ‘rights’, and ‘shared future’.  How do Republicans expect to be respected, when a parade that would take no more than two minutes to pass Ardoyne shops is denied respect.  What rights are defended through violence against peaceful cultural expression? What shared future, when less than a hundred yards of road is claimed territorially as ‘ours’?  Sectarian apartheid is not a future of any sort! In what world is are three nights of riots a proportional response to a two minute walk past some shops?

Looking at the events in Ardoyne, is there any real difference between ‘dissidents’ and Sinn Fein other than rhetoric?  Hard to tell. Springfield, Ormeau, Dunloy, Rasharkin, Ardoyne: the difference is time and scale. Republicans share the common goal of keeping Protestants out of sight out of mind: to each hold the power to dictate cultural expression; to create a territorial exclusion zone.  Sectarian, racist, or just criminal thuggery –words and actions add up to the same difference at the Ardoyne shops.

Blaming the Loyal Orders for nights of rioting, and more generally for everything, deflects attention from the battle raging within Republicanism. However, deflecting attention and looking outside for the boyeymen, makes it even harder to provide the Ardoyne community a voice it needs to find toleration, respect and accommodation with its Protestant neighbours.”

The voting percentages show little change for any Party other than the DUP (2004/2009).

Alliance and Greens may be cock-a-hoop at their result, except that closer analysis shows they gained no more than the minor parties altogether in 2004. This takes account of the lower turnout, a drop of around 65,000 votes, to a more ‘normal’ level of voting in the European elections of around 43% – still a way to go with the UK turnout of around 34%, though roughly equal to the European-wide average (though some countries have compulsory voting).

Election details are here.

Even though Barbre DeBrun was elected on the first count, and topped the poll, Sinn Fein worked hard to stand still in this election.  Same for Alban Maginness and the SDLP.  The SDLP at least halted decline and saw the Sinn Fein percentage of the vote drop very marginally (0.3%).  While the story of the election was on the split in the Unionist vote, the nationalist parties are in a rut.  Sinn Fein’s rut is on both sides of the border – they lost their one MEP, and a decent performance in local government elections held on the same day has since been spoiled by resignations.

For Sinn Fein the question must be ‘where next?’.  For all nationalists, it must surely be dawning that a United Ireland is generations away, if ever.  The Republic of Ireland is preoccupied with its economy. Moreover, across Europe voters turned away from the left, on which both main nationalist parties loosely base their political approach: though interesting to see Sinn Fein lose in Dublin to a real socialist suggesting a squeeze for Sinn Fein between left and right.

Sinn Fein’s campaign for a United Ireland (in America) does a lot to help Jim Allister’s proposition that the Belfast Agreement was not a ‘settlement’: another Sinn Fein contradiction; if we cannot go ‘back’ to pre-Belfast Agreement, neither can we go forward to a United Ireland if a ‘settlement’ exists. If  Sinn Fein’s next step is to go off to America and argue for a United Ireland there, as Alex Kane points out in the News Letter, it might as well as no-one in Ireland is listening.

In the time since the election the SDLP hasn’t really done anything much. The post-election shuffle of committee positions in Stormont passed by almost unremarked.

The Unionist vote split broadly three ways: DUP, Diane Dodds, 88,346; UCUNF, Jim Nicholson, 82,893; TUV, Jim Allister, 66,197.

As this was an STV PR election, lets start with Jim Nicholson who topped the Unionist vote at the end of the count.  The decline in voter numbers, though a marginal increase in the percentage share due to the overall decrease in voting, leaves it impossible to know if the new collaboration with the Conservative Party was a benefit or not to the Ulster Unionists.  Either the UUP vote could have been worse, and the Tory link attracted middle class voters who would not have otherwise bothered. Or, the UUP have bottomed and the Tory link has been a convenient financial leg up until fortunes improve.

Of course the Ulster Unionists hope that the split between the DUP and TUV will deliver an extra seat in the upcoming, Westminster elections. Perhaps. Any seat would be a bonus given that it seems likely that North Down will be lost one way or another.

More interesting was the transfer of the majority of Jim Allister’s vote to Jim Nicholson.

It is not entirely correct to view Jim Allister’s TUV as ‘integrationalist’. Integrationalist has long been used as a term of abuse by devolutionists to indicate that this was a lesser Unionism, in some way; mostly to suggest that relying on the ‘untrustworthy’ Westminster establishment was plain foolish as it was in cahoots with the Pan-nationalist front.  Nevertheless it seems logical that if TUV voters are less enamoured with devolution, in principle, then the natural transfer would be to a Party that provides the stronger pan-UK link – a national representation through the UUP/Con collaboration.

Transfers will matter more at the next Assembly election, where those last few seats will be down to how the parties view each other, and where every Conservative as well as UUP vote (at present there is no agreement between the two parties for Assembly elections) will be as important as the TUV’s.  This triumvirate may provide a serious threat to the DUP in the Assembly elections because it would probably mean the final transfers will see Unionists other than the DUP elected.   Moreover, the addition of the TUV to the ballot paper seems, for now, to be shoring up the electoral turnout of the Unionist vote thereby increasing the total non-DUP vote.

The UUP have picked up on one of Jim Allister’s election themes – that the DUP/Sinn Fein led government is inherently unstable. Since the election the UUP have increasingly built up a picture that suggests that government in Northern Ireland is failing.  However, the UUP offers no alternative and no analysis as to why it would be different with an alternative arrangement of the chairs around the Executive table – currently the only possible outcome of an Assembly election.  It has hinted that a Conservative Government would bring change, though exactly what change is not elaborated – event though this doesn’t square with David Camerons endorsement of current arrangements.  To some extent this ambiguity assists the TUV: it reinforces the message that change is possible.

Since the European election the UUP is too gleefully destabilising the very institutional structures on which its future depends – the Assembly is its electoral lifeline. While seeking to undermine the DUP/Sinn Fein axis may be amusing, with some good quips, but where’s the strategy? The reshuffle of the Executive pack following an Assembly election is likely to create a TUV ‘opposition’ in Stormont, and  a Sinn Fein First Minister.  Good for democracy, but something the UUP voter is unlikely to see as attractive, and voting in Northern Ireland can be hugely tactical.  This may undermine part of that gain they would have hoped for by the TUV splitting the DUP vote, as the UUP would see it.

For the DUP the most worrying statistic much be that the overall final vote of 23.6 for the final DUP votes and 27% for the UUP/Con takes the vote split back to the electoral shares of the 2001 Westminster poll (22%/27%) or further back to the 1985 local elections (24%/29%) – 5% of Jim Allister’s vote did not transfer to anyone. This places perspective in the challenge to the DUP following the European election.

In many ways the electoral performance of Diane Dodds has left the DUP with a conundrum. In one election the DUP has lost an electorate vote that took years to build.  Where does it go to rebuild that electorate?

On the one hand it is clear that the votes borrowed from the Ulster Unionists and other liberal/integrationalist unionists have now left the DUP, and are unlikely to return. On the other hand, there is a deeply dissatisfied DUP vote that has found the confidence to vote TUV. As the DUP know from vote-building 2001-2008 the first task is to make the voter comfortable in being prepared to vote differently to their norm, and then to capture and build on that vote.  For the DUP, the Jim Allister vote represents both the loss of the votes from natural Ulster Unionists and, more worryingly from natural DUP voters.

If the Ministerial shuffle of this past month is meant to impress, then the DUP is failing to understand the challenge ahead.  What is the message of the reshuffle? Double jobbing is going? Mostly: good; but Peter Robinson has been at pains to stress that this had been planned anyway.

The DUP lacks a narrative that will either mollify those who are attracted to the TUV because of its clarity or, because it fears the TUV vote more than UCUNF, attract those who might be supportive of their success in managing the current power-sharing arrangements. So while the appointment of Nelson McCausland may be a sop to the ‘hard-core’ voter and perhaps make a start on attracting back some of those who voted TUV, it will equally annoy the very UUP/Con type voter the DUP needs to perchance attract.

So what then of the TUV?  The conditions for Jim Allister to gain his European vote has been rumbling for some time – like a volcano, it rumbles before it blows. All parties try to paint the TUV as variously a ‘one man show’, integrationalist (as if relying on Westminster was worse than sharing power with Sinn Fein), ‘intent on taking us back to the bad old days’ or ‘extreme’.

Unionists would look on the last two points and point out that Jim Allister’s dissent from the ‘new order’ is not the same as ‘dissent’ within republicanism.  He has no guns.  Both the ‘integrationalist’ tag and the ‘bad old days’ warning are based on a presumption that the current Belfast Agreement arrangements are perfectly acceptable. But neither the DUP, nor the UUP, believes that they are. The DUP agreed with the outline of Jim Allister’s critique of the arrangements before they returned from St.Andrews. The UUP hints that change will happen.

Party depth is probably the most difficult challenge ahead for Jim Allister.  For intelligence and integrity (even if you don’t agree with him) he stands heads above most of the rest of the political characters peddling their political wares in the ‘huckster’s shop’ as described by Sir Reg Empey (and watch here).  Except, of course, Jim Allister is not in the Assembly. Nor does he have any DUP defectors in the Assembly. He does have a handful of Councillors; in more way than one, a handful.

Any successful Party must have discipline – something the DUP still has, and the UUP seems to have gained some along with Conservative Party finance.  It must also have some depth, with an ability to promote its messages on a range of fronts.  To do that, it is necessary to have a group of competent advocates who are able to widen the commentary, particularly in target constituencies. Competency means staying on message, building positive profile and moving the Party agenda forward (even if only slightly, a bit at a time as the DUP did 1985-2001, and then with vigour and depth 2001-2008).

The DUP has responded quickly to the European Election result, but without any clear direction or purpose. At least the DUP have realised there is a shift in the Unionist mood, and that the TUV fight is with them in the first instance. The UUP are too busy talking up their ‘success’ to realise that they are still standing on sinking electoral sands.

Jim Allister has no more need to outline details of his future framework for political institutions in Northern Ireland than David Cameron does to detail his economic/tax plans for the nation so far from an election.  Allister’s core demand for change is shared by both the DUP and the UUP.  That change is possible is confirmed by Sinn Fein. The Alliance Party could benefit in this atmosphere if it wasn’t so busy chasing the potential of the Policing and Justice Ministry.

There is an electorate out there that is either disengaged or angry enough to vote anyone but ‘the consensus’. There are more votes out there for the TUV; mostly DUP, though plenty of others seeking a positive alternative that is credible and intellectually respectable.

The size of Jim Allister’s vote in the European Election was a shock to the political parties at Stormont because it showed a deep crack in ‘the consensus’ on which the political structures arising from the Belfast Agreement rely.

In the aftershock of the election all the focus is on the DUP’s response; though that is not to say the reaction to the vote by other parties is of no consequence.  Pretending that is not the case is delusional. For Jim Allister, small snipes seem to be enough for not to keep his quarry unsettled.  The UUP is doing half his job for him by arguing the instability and paralysis in the power-sharing arrangements. Sinn Fein, and certain SDLP representatives, continue to demonise the Loyal Orders in such a way as to show the lack of tolerance or acceptance from nationalism of a shared future – so why vote for Unionists who believe in one?

Jim Allister may well need to create a more positive narrative that has a principled core around which more Unionists, from its many shades, feel comfortable to coalesce. He may need to add depth to the TUV. However, the behaviour of main Parties at Stormont since the European Election is only helping to confirm those who voted for Jim Allister that their’s was the right choice.  At least in the short term, if Jim Allister does nothing much over the summer, things will continue to rumble along to his advantage.

The UUP presents its link with the Conservative Party as a way of being at the centre of UK politics.  At the same time that link is likely to push the UUP to the margins of Europe.

The UUP alignment with the Conservatives is presented as part of a wider vision for ‘The Union’, and for the UUP to be at the centre of national discourse.  As we edge towards the European Election, should Jim Nicholson win one of the three Northern Ireland seats he will return to Europe as part of a Conservative led group at the margins of European discourse.

Currently the British Conservatives in the European Parliament are closely associated with the European Peoples Party (EPP) and European Democrats (ED), collectively the EPP-ED.  That is to change following the upcoming European Election in June, with David Cameron committed to leaving the EPP-ED.

The EPP is broadly Christian Democrat in nature and very pro-European Union/Unity.  It is also very much dominated by the Germanic view of ‘social market economy’.  It broadly expects others to share that view.  They are more comfortable with ‘social market’ than ‘free market’, more statist than liberal.  The ED is broadly balanced to believe more in the free market than the social market and more liberal than statist.  The groups probably share more in underlying principle than either would credit the other.

Within the EPP, for example, among the Spanish Popular Party and the Swedish Moderates, there are friends to be found for British Conservatives. But the Conservatives are committed to abandoning these natural friends.

Membership of a group brings the strength in numbers that is necessary to wheel and deal for committee places and influence within the Parliament, as much in Europe as in Westminster. Dan Hannan MEP outlines his support of the Conservative decision to break from the EPP. From Dan Hannan’s position, leaving the EPP makes sense. What is not explained is why this can’t be done within the EPP-ED, building coalitions of like-minded liberal-conservatives from the ED base and using the EPP-ED strength to shift policy.

David Cameron has made a considerable effort to present the Conservative Party as a modern, progressive centre-right party committed to restoring economic prosperity, combined with a strong sense of social justice. The ED is expressly committed to democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, national sovereignty, free enterprise, minimal regulation, low taxation, private ownership, respect and security for every individual and a strong transatlantic alliance. What in that commitment is out of step with the Conservative Party manifesto for Europe, or indeed for the UK?

The ED cannot make a difference within the EPP-ED because it has not the seven parties to work from a position of strength: it currently has five parties; the two from UK, the Czech ODS, the Portuguese Popular Party and Italian Pensioners Party.  The Conservative party has committed to finding new allies. Possibly. From eastern Europe? There are plenty; many unstable, few unaligned. There is certainly room to work. Eastern Europeans to the centre right feel abandoned by the larger nations – and voted for a Europe of free nations, not a nation-numbing collective. A strong (small, broad c) conservative vision would perhaps help shape politics on a wider arena, a conservatism beyond Britain – a vision for a European big house, perhaps, built on principle and not Party interests. Not while the British Conservatives allow British domestic politics dictate European engagement: actually, British Conservative house-keeping dictating European engagement.

What is not clear is why the Conservatives have decided to cut themselves off from the major and strong centre-right grouping rather than work from within, and what they have to offer that would be particularly attractive or particularly different from what would be possible building from that ED base.

The Conservative Party is heading off into a political corner with its teddy bear.  The Party has reached this point after years of neglect in international relations. While taking part in structures such as the old European Democrat Union (EDU) and International Democrat Union (IDU) the Conservative engagement was at best perfuctory – by default rather than design. True, engagement at IDU level with our American friends was undertaken with greater enthusiasm, though little more purpose. But at Euro level there was always exasperation and confusion as to what it was all about.

International relations in the Conservative Party was most often left to enthusiastic individuals, who threw their heart and soul into carving a relevant and significant place for the Party internationally. But more often than not they were left alone, and without a respected Party role.

The Germans with their powerful Stifung (foundations) and the Swedes with a fundamental commitment to international relations bring purpose to all their European activities and engage in a structured and measured way at all levels from youth through to senior Party activity. Against this, Conservative functionality in engagement meant it often looked out of place or out of step with European colleagues because it was defracted and half-hearted.  Current policy will appear to Europeans as churlish and pointless.

Whether or not the Conservative Party is associated with the EPP would not have been relevant to Northern Ireland’s European vote without the recent Conservative/UUP link-up.  Jim Nicholson made a point in his News Letter web chat that he had “been elected by other MEP colleagues during the last five years to sit on the bureau of the Parliament.” This is in no small part a consequence of his long standing association with the EPP.  What happens when he exits from that group?

Through the Conservative link, the representation in Europe will be significantly weakened as the Conservatives group, UUP in tow, go off to do its own thing. That matters. With Nicholson elected it will mean that none of the MEPS will be part of a significant group – though the EPP could be practical enough to make offers to either Diane Dodds or Jim Allister to retain a British component in its group.   But as it seems likely, all Northern Ireland MEPs would be linked to marginal groups, or be independent.  The strength of connections to major political groups, and the centres of influence that these represent, will be lost completely.

No matter how much the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists promote their link as strengthening the Union, in Europe it will inevitably result in a reduction in Unionist influence. While many Conservatives believe that Europe doesn’t matter, that attitude is something Northern Ireland can ill afford.

The sole Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Westminster MP Lady Sylvia Hermon finally, publicly, confirmed the widely held belief that she is unhappy with the Ulster Conservative and Unionist New Force (UCUNF). Following a BBC interview, the Belfast Telegraph has followed through with a series of points on which her disquiet may be founded:

• She feels she was excluded from all discussions about the possibility of a link-up between the parties, despite being their only Westminster politician.

• She was left to discover the dramatic changes in a shop where she spotted the newspaper headlines.

• She has been hauled in (thedissenter emphasis) for meetings with Tory heavy-hitters including Ken Clarke, as well as for talks with David Cameron, flanked (thedissenter emphasis) by the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Paterson, and Andrew MacKay, a former shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

To these is added her general feeling that the Conservatives have little understanding of Ulster politics. Having listened to a number of presentations by Conservatives in Northern Ireland over the past months that is something that has some resonance with thedissenter.

Print journalists use language to emphasise points or to communicate emotion. thedissenter emphasis in the final point above, suggests that meetings with Sylvia to address ‘issues’ were less of a round table and more of a telling off – serious men telling off a silly woman who should only be impressed at meeting Ken Clarke, David Cameron, Own Patterson and (er) Andrew McKay; men of such importance, she must surely have been impressed.

But why does Sylvia speak now? Perhaps it was the simple opportunity; a radio interview on expenses developed onto other topics, as they do. However, a simple answer that suggested she had had a lot on her mind recently and was still taking time to consider the issue would have stopped the new line of questioning in its tracks.

The opaque nature of all the UCUNF deliberations makes it impossible to know exactly what has happened, or is going on, in the background. For certain, Sylvia has always been an Ulster Unionist. It is a heartfelt statement when she says “If my party chooses to move to call themselves by a different name, I’m terribly sorry and terribly disappointed by that but I remain an Ulster Unionist.” Surely in discussions the emotion of her position would have been recognised – though the apparent tenor of the meetings suggests not; the Conservatives talked, but maybe they didn’t listen.

Perhaps though it was Sylvia’s legal eye that made her snap into being perpared to make her position known. It has been suggested that Sylvia may have been upset at the sight of the very Conservative (in line with UK-wide format) Jim Nicholson Conservative and Unionist election posters that expunge the Ulster Unionist connection. How much more would she be upset at the first of the Jim Nicholson election material. In the small print, to the bottom right of the SURVEY on the leaflet, is a Data Protection declaration. Here it is clear that the information being provided is for the benefit of the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party alone: because as there are still two parties as Sir Reg keeps repeating, the information cannot be passed onto a third party (UUP).

Hardly an example of an equal, sharing, partnership.

In all aspects of the UCUNF collaboration Sylvia may simply be concerned at the imbalance of the relationship between the two parties. As her emotions are in the frame, perhaps it is instinct that is telling her this deal is fundamentally wrong. Sure, the Conservative money to fund this election is very welcome to a cash strapped UUP; a lifeline. Sylvia may well be right in questioning a Conservative lifeline that is ever so loosely tied around the neck of the UUP, for now.

So looking forward (and that is said with all the enthusiasm mustered, which is not that great) the outcome of the vote for the Northern Ireland Members of the European Parliament, June 2009, is unlikely to deliver an electoral surprise. It is probable that the same three Parties will win the seats. That doesn’t mean that the voting spread won’t be of political interest; the biggest story may well be the decline in number of people being bothered to vote.

There are three seats up for grabs under the proportional representation system used for the Northern Ireland. These are currently held by Jim Allister, elected under the DUP banner and topping the poll in 2004, Barbre de Brun, Sinn Fein, 2nd highest vote, and Jim Nicholson, UUP, 3rd and elected on final transfers.

A Province-wide campaign is a challenge to all but the larger Parties. This means that, unusually for Northern Ireland, there are relatively few candidates: just seven in the 2004 European election. The Alliance Party, Labour and the Conservative Party threw their lot behind independent John Gilliland.

In 2004, the first count results were as follows: 


Jim Allister (DUP) 175,761 (32.0%) up 3.6%; elected on first count.
Bairbre De Brun (SF) 144,541 (26.3%) up 9.0%; elected on first count.
Jim Nicholson (UUP) 91,164 (16.6%) down 1.0%. 

Martin Morgan (SDLP) 87,559 (15.9%) down12.1%. 

John Gilliland (Independent) 36,270 (6.6%).
Eamonn McCann (SEA) 9,172 (1.6%).
Lindsay Whitcroft (Green) 4,810 (0.9%).

In percentage terms the 2004 parties’ vote was almost the same in the 2007 Assembly elections. However, like for like, the 2004 European Elections saw a decline in the overall vote of around 20% from the 1999 Euro poll. While the DUP topped the poll in both instances, its vote was down around 20,000 in 2004 compared to 1999. The decline in the total unionist vote was about 75,000. Although the Sinn Fein vote was up around 27,000 the big loser was the SDLP whose vote crashed by more than half from the 190,000 votes for John Hume. The great uncertainty in the upcoming election is the extent to which the overall vote might decline and how the spread of that decline will impact on each Party – it is a factor that both unionist and nationalist parties will fear, equally.

There’s no agreed independent candidate this time. The Alliance Party has selected Ian Parsley, a young candidate who is being offered some profile, no doubt with a longer term view of election in the North Down area. In 1999 the Alliance vote was less than 15,000; the same or more would be a huge success for Alliance.

The SDLP selection of Alban Maginness seems to be a pitch for the old traditional middle class vote. Maginness is better known than Martin Morgan, the considerably younger 2004 candidate. There is nothing new to ‘bring back’ voters. The greatest threat to the SDLP is a further decline in their vote: if the SDLP can hold its vote from 2005 it would be happy.

Jim Nicholson is once again standing for the Ulster Unionist Party. The Conservative Party, with which the Ulster Unionists are now aligned, is unlikely to bring many votes. Any small increase in the UUP vote is more likely to be from some middle class Catholic voters who are unhappy with nationalist parties’ support for the end of academic selection.

No doubt Nicholson’s seat will only be secured with the transfer of votes from Jim Allister, now standing for Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). The UUP will hope that the number of transfers might make the final vote ‘close’ and attempt to use this to vindicate its Conservative alliance. That would be wrong. Transfers to the UUP will be a protest against the DUP, not an indication of trust restored.

Of the two largest parties last time, Sinn Fein keeps Barbre de Brun as its candidate, no doubt campaigning on experience and its ‘leadership’ credentials; though some republicans may be asking where that leadership is heading. de Brun has been virtually anonymous since her election to Europe. The Sinn Fein led policy to end academic selection is as unpopular with parents of children at Catholic Grammars as much as it is unpopular among unionists. On balance though, this is more likely to hit the SDLP, who share Sinn Fein’s policy objective, and is more rooted in the middle classes than Sinn Fein. However, whether any bread and butter issue will make an impact on the European campaigns is doubtful. More fundamentally, Sinn Fein must be looking at both the last Fermanagh Council by-election and the possibility of a ‘dissident’ republican standing and wondering how well the once envied machine will be able to deliver the vote as it has done in the past.

Jim Allister’s TUV poses a threat to the overall DUP vote. There is general Unionist disaffection with the performance of (at) Stormont. It could be expected that up to about one third of the DUP vote at the 2007 Assembly election would have been with an expectation that the Party would not be entering a power-sharing government with Sinn Fein. Some of this group may well still vote for DUP as the least bad option, there will be some not vote at all and the remainder will vote for Jim Allister.

In 1999 Bob McCartney of the UK Unionist Party gained around 20,000 votes, and this vote would certainly have transferred largely to Jim Allister in 2004 – one reason for the DUP vote holding. The DUP will also have benefited in 2004 from a drift of voters away from the Ulster Unionist Party, who by that stage were disillusioned with David Trimble. It is unlikely that any more votes for Jim Allister will come from the UUP – that vote has long left the Ulster Unionist Party.

Jim Allister is likely to pick up the ‘angry’ vote of those who transferred their vote to the DUP, and feel let down, and the DUP vote that believes there is no right time to share power with IRA/Sinn Fein, and feel betrayed. The bookies may be right that Allister’s total vote will most likely amount to no more than around 30,000-40,000 votes. A higher vote and the current sense of a Unionist electorate that is deeply unsettled is actually an electorate with a seething anger towards current political leadership and direction from both Unionist parties.

What then of the DUP? The candidate is Belfast based, though Diane Dodds has a high profile as Councillor and ex-MLA in West Belfast; she is also married to the current Minister of Finance Nigel Dodds, so has high name recognition. Her views on the price of bullocks and lambs is unknown – while Allister has been very much present in the News Letter’s Saturday pullout Farming Life; a widely read farming paper across the community. There is also the possibility that Diane Dodds may suffer to some extent from the fallout from the Westminster expenses row. Some unionist voters may be unwilling to vote for yet another DUP ‘family’. A DUP election strategy based on it being the only Party that can gain more votes than Sinn Fein seems tired, and a little odd when the two parties are ‘sharing’ power in Stormont. Alternative strategies may not be available.

Jim Allister may not have much chance of retaining his European seat, but his votes will still matter and will probably be the focus of post-election media analysis. Allister’s vote represents an angry and alienated Unionist electorate that may be sidelined, but can’t be easily ignored. What will be interesting will be to review the spread of the TUV votes – will Allister’s votes be predominately urban or rural? What would be the impact at the next Westminster election of the TUV vote; where the DUP and UUP are close enough that a decent percent vote by the TUV would mean the UUP regaining a seat, possibly South Antrim – assuming the UUP is able to assure a turnout of its core vote.

There is also interest in the spread of nationalist voting. At this point we do not know if a ‘dissident’ republican will stand in opposition to Sinn Fein. As Liam Clarke says in the Sunday Times, even a 2% ‘dissident’ vote would impact on the Sinn Fein’s ambitions. Will Sinn Fein fail to gain votes, or even hold its own? Will the SDLP hold enough votes to still be in the political game come the Westminster election within the next year or so.

There is little to suggest that the outcome of the June election will be anything other than the same old parties being returned to Europe. But the disaffection with the current political leaderships may mean that a protest may be made by opting for the outsider or simply not voting. Will we be looking at another sectarian head-count in the June Euro poll? Perhaps. Perhaps also wondering where the heads have gone?

The book thoroughly lays bare the futility of the IRA’s campaign, and the lies used to propagate that campaign and on which the pursuit of its political objectives has been prosecuted.

MacDonald outlines the lies. These could be direct as in the attempt to shift the blame for the Abercorn bombing onto the British Army or a unionist grouping. Or they could be more subtle as in the effort to justify the murder of Edgar Graham as somehow inevitable through his being part of a ‘Unionist establishment’ at Queen’s University Belfast where he lectured – as if that could ever justify murder.

He outlines the disingenuous. How, if collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and British forces was endemic, as republicans strongly contend, were only 3% of those killed by loyalists over 30 years militant republicans? The IRA promoted itself as the ‘defender’ of the local catholic population in many areas: yet the single largest loss of life in the predominately nationalist Short Stand was caused by an IRA bomb exploding prematurely.

Mostly he outlines how anything now claimed to have been achieved by the IRA could well have been achieved equally through non-violence. This book is not an easy read. First, and the only criticism, it would have benefited from a stronger editorial hand in organising the information. Second, and perhaps the order of the information makes no difference, the book is depressing.

The book is depressing because it suggests that the IRA is the same as it ever was: the lies over Abercorn, the cover-up over Robert McCartney, the wall of silence over Paul Quinn.

Even more depressing is the code of republicanism in its attitude to Protestants/Unionists. With the exception of one or two who McDonald rightly praises for their individual effort, that effort seems overwhelmed by the words and deeds of others. For the most part Protestants/Unionists simply don’t matter.

McDonald’s book is an inconvenient truth for Republicans. It is a valuable handbook for anyone who wants an insight into the Republican mindset. It is a welcome contribution to understanding the present and learning from the past. To conclude on a positive note. If we learn from the past, and better understand our present, there is that little bit of extra hope for the future.

The two parties, and they are still two parties, have reached an accommodation. Vice-Chairman of the Northern Ireland Conservatives, Jeff Peel, provided some insight to Conservative thinking behind the arrangement on the regional Politics Show. The desire to create a new political space, offering the electorate something that is not based on the nationalist/unionist them/us equation, is to be applauded.

Alex Kane writes in the News Letter about the ‘pact’ from an Ulster Unionist viewpoint. It is interesting that the word ‘agreement’ never appears. Yes, the two parties have ‘agreed closer cooperation’ (conditional agreement). But the words used to describe the status of the new arrangement are many and varied: pact; links; relationship, albeit ‘mutually beneficial’; project, electoral vehicle; or electoral force.

The arrangement reached between the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists does appear to be constructively ambiguous. While both Parties are able to talk about going forward together, they remain distinctly independent. Each, however, must anticipate some gains in this arrangement to be prepared to at least look as if they are in some way co-joined.

For the Ulster Unionist Party the benefit may be more immediate. The proof of a policy is in its appeal to the electorate and the first election to test the Conservative/UUP arrangement will be Europe in 2009. It must be expected that the Conservatives will provide both finance and electoral expertise – both in short supply around the UUP – to support the candidacy of Jim Nicholson, the current UUP MEP. It will be important that Jim Nicholson is able to record at least an improved vote on the last election, even if he remains the unionist electorate’s second choice. For Nicholson to be third behind the other sitting unionist (ex-DUP) MEP, Jim Alistair, would be catastrophic for the UUP and represent a setback for the new arrangement.

It must also please the UUP that the arrangement seems to have upset the DUP: though why it matters to the larger party (by electoral vote) is unclear. So what if a youngish, intelligent, financially strong Conservative Party in Northern Ireland has saddled itself with an aging, cliquish and financially embarrassed UUP? Where is the threat to the DUP?

From the detail that is available on the new Conservative/UUP arrangement there is nothing to suggest that it will make a great deal of difference to the electoral map. It is fair to say that for Europe, that all-important first test, Jim Nicholson is going to be old wine in a new bottle; hardly a challenge for the DUP. The DUP remains the largest Party at Westminster, and none of their seats appears to be vulnerable to another unionist Party. The present political state of Britain suggests that the election may be closer than it would have been six months ago and the nine DUP seats may ultimately matter more to the Conservative Party than the one UUP seat in North Down.

A temporary halt to UUP electoral decline, with a fair wind and some new blood presented to the electorate, should be expected from the Conservative/UUP arrangement That, however, would be enough for the Conservatives nationally. The declaration of intent to stand a candidate in every constituency in the country is not just political hubris. Should David Cameron’s Conservatives win the next election, as they are expected to do, it will be a very English victory. Understanding the weakness of a national government with only a handful of representatives outside of England in devolved jurisdictions, the fallback will be that the Conservatives stood in every seat.

While not winning a great many seats in the first past the post contests, a mandate of sorts might be presumed from an increased vote, or at least a substantial vote in all parts of the United Kingdom. If Labour lose votes, even if the Conservative Party gain few, it could be expected that the Conservatives could achieve 15%-18% in of he vote in Scotland, 20%-25% in Wales and with the UU arrangement between 15%-20% in Northern Ireland. Respectable.

As David Shiels points out in the Belfast Telegraph the position plays well with the grassroots of the Conservative Party. The play will also provide a positive to balance with elements of the broader and very necessary Cameronian modernisation that may not have played so well with the grassroots. This is not to say that David Cameron is not genuine in wishing to embed ‘unionism’ as a fundamental value within the Conservative Party. The time spent by Cameron and his colleagues in supporting the process to arrive at the current arrangement with the UUP does not suggest that this is a mere sideshow in some bigger political game plan.

Doubts about the arrangement only arise because it hardly seems final. It is an arrangement that lacks a sense of fundamental shift. Where is the seismic shake to the body politic? The announcement hardly generated a sense of excitement that would radically alter the political landscape.

Shifts in electoral allegiances in Northern Ireland tend to happen as a consequence of something significant happening in the wider political arena. The Maze IRA hunger strikes gave Sinn Fein its entry to the political scene. The Belfast Agreement resulted in the Ulster Unionist vote being eroded over time by the DUP. Nothing has happened to make the Conservative/UU arrangement seem particularly relevant to where Northern Ireland politics stands today, or anytime soon.

David Cameron will come to Belfast for Ulster Unionist Conference on the 6th December. It is the same weekend that commemorates the Shutting of the Gates in Londonderry. Will Cameron be able to inspire the electorate with a vision of a new constructive Unionism that will result in electoral success for the new arrangement. Or will the electorate decide that for now ‘safety’ lies behind the familiar and safe walls, biding their time to see which way the wind blows.

For the families of those who died on Bloody Sunday their stated objective in the long campaign for a Public Inquiry is ‘the truth’. Their hope is admirable. Is their cause attainable? Will they gain closure?

We will ballpark the sum to be spent on the Saville Inquiry at around £200 million, give or take a few million. It has taken years, volumes of evidence, acres of newspaper reporting. One more year is needed, apparently, before a report will be ready. And then? Will the truth be told?

At the end of the Saville Inquiry all we will have is a conclusion based on the volume of information the Inquiry has gathered. To understand just why the Saville Inquiry will fail to find a definitive truth we need to look just a year or two later than Bloody Sunday.

Kathleen Feeney was 14 years old when she was shot while playing on a street in Londonderry, November 1973. She was the second youngest of five children and the sister of an SDLP Councillor.

At the time the IRA said; “The people of Derry are aware that we have admitted responsibility for our actions even when mistakes were made by us and civilians injured.” It continued: “We say categorically that the shooting of young Kathleen Feeney was the work of the British Army and not of the Republican movement.”

Unsurprisingly, street rioting and mayhem ensued after the shooting. The IRA claimed at the time that it had killed a soldier dead in revenge.

Over thirty years later the IRA issued a statement that tells a very different version of events. In a statement released to the Derry Journal the Provisional IRA said: “The IRA accepts responsibility for the death of Kathleen Feeney. Our failure to publicly accept responsibility for her death until now has only added to the hurt and pain of the Feeney family.” The statement continued that: “Kathleen was hit by one of a number of shots fired by an IRA active service unit that had fired upon a British army foot patrol.”

There was an apology to the Feeney family. The statement also made reference to, “an operation against the British Army in retaliation for the death of Kathleen Feeney.” There was no apology for the murder of the unnamed soldier.

We know therefore that the IRA believed it perfectly just to lie to exacerbate division and to increase alienation of nationalists from authority. The killing of Kathleen Feeney was important in this respect. The sister of an SDLP councillor would show that no nationalist was ‘safe’ from the Brits: that the Brits killed indiscriminately. The claim to have shot a British soldier in reprisal placed the IRA as defenders of all nationalists and not just republicans.

Why does this matter in respect to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry? It matters because lying about IRA operations was an essential element of strategy. Anything that reinforced alienation from the British, and in particular induced a hatred of the British Army, was an essential part of building the IRA’s profile as defenders of the Catholic population.

So is it possible to believe IRA claims not to have had guns on the streets on the day? Did the Parachute Regiment shoot without provocation?

How could the IRA ever admit to having played a role on Bloody Sunday? Bloody Sunday shocked, alienated, and radicalised the Catholic population of Londonderry, and further afield. The IRA gained moral justification for its campaign of violence.

The IRA gave no evidence to the Saville Inquiry. For the IRA there is one truth – a truth that allowed a single day to justify murder and mayhem for a generation to follow, and even now…

Pity the families of those who died as a consequence of Bloody Sunday; the fourteen who died as a consequence of that particular day and the scores that followed in the wake. The search for truth, irrelevant of how much money is spent, will probably remain a futile quest.

The IRA lied to further its cause in respect of Kathleen Feeney’s murder. Should we dismiss the possibility that it could not allow the truth to be revealed if that were to undermine a fundamental justification on which it built its murderous campaign?

Poor little Kathleen Feeney was merely collateral damage to the IRA. Her family could be afforded the truth because in the history of the total conflict her death was of little significance to the IRA. Will there be any such closure for the families of those who died on Bloody Sunday?

If you go expecting to see Republican propaganda on the big screen, then you’ll see Republican propaganda.

Republicans seemed to welcome the movie as a tribute to the courage of Bobby Sands and Unionists condemned the waste of State money that supported the making of the ‘Republican’ movie in Northern Ireland.

The tackling of a subject matter such as the 1981 Hunger Strike makes the movie ‘controversial’? Thought provoking perhaps, but no movie is controversial simply because of its subject. Is ‘Hunger’ a true portrayal – of course not, it is a movie. Is the treatment of the subject matter ‘fair’ – by whose judgement or against what criteria? Does it make Sands the Hero – Steve McQueen, the director, says ‘take a closer look if that is what you think.’

There has been a great deal of focus on the dialogue between Sands (played outstandingly by Michael Fassbender) and the fictional Fr Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham). This is the most intense piece of dialogue in a movie that largely speaks through its cinematography. The movie is a triptych. To understand the importance of this dialogue it is necessary to explore before and after this centrepiece.

The first part of the film is about the Prison Officer Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham). This is a portrait of a man on the edge. His only fleeting escape is locker room bravado with his fellow officers. Lohan is a lonely man. He dresses alone, eats alone, stands alone. His loneliness is compounded by visits to an aged mother who does not know his name. He is a man who no longer knows himself. Lost.

Then there is the new inmate, Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) uncomfortable with his demand for political status, longing for family, out of place among his fellow inmates on the IRA dirty protest. Yet a member of the IRA and therefore obliged to conform, to believe. Trapped.

The focus of the film moves slowly towards Sands as the central subject. The encounter with Fr Moran is gripping. It is Moran who frames final act. He questions Sands’s motive in pursuing a hunger strike to the death. He points to the IRA inmates as being out of touch. Inside too long. Brutalised by the system, and yet of the system. How in such circumstances could any decision be rational? Deluded.

Sands responds as a driven and focused individual. It is his vision, his will, his decision. Moran points to the inmates as a mill stone around the neck of the IRA, the dirty protest as being a no win strategy that took the initiative away from a leadership outside the prison. Sands was taking them into a new no-win battle that would simply draw attention to IRA impotence. Sands does not accept this. Sands believes he is the future. His death will be a new dawn, an inspiration to the next generation. Martyr.

The last part of the movie guides us through the death of Sands. The brutality of the opening part of the movie is contrasted with the serene, humanity of death.

All that is left is the question posed by Fr Moran to Sands: ‘what does death achieve?’

This movie does not present Sands as a hero. He is presented as a man with purpose, but out of date and out of touch. His death was his choice, his decision: as was the death of Lohan. It was right that the film ended on the death of Sands. It was an end in more ways than one.

For the first time since reading Richard O’Rawe’s book ‘Blanketmen’, the end of ‘Hunger’ allowed me to understand why Sinn Fein/IRA/Republicans dislike O’Rawe so much. O’Rawe’s proposition is that the inmates wished to end the hunger strike after four men had died, but the outside command allowed the strike to continue to enable Owen Carron to keep the Parliamentary seat won by Bobby Sands.

Fr Moran points to the deep hole in which the ‘outside’ command found itself at the time of the hunger strikes. There was no military victory possible and the course of political discourse was being driven by factors inside the Maze prison and beyond ‘control’. Ironically the Sands hunger strike provided the IRA with a way out of that hole. The election of Sands and then Carron set them on a political path that has ultimately led them to Stormont.

Sands represents the end of an era. That is why O’Rawe has been cast out of the Republican family. He pointed out that the hunger strike became a vehicle for change; a change that ended the IRA of Bobby Sands and heralded a new political era – not quite the new dawn that Sands had anticipated. Betrayed.

Hunger is a powerful movie. There are powerful performances by the cast. There are powerful undercurrents too.

The prison is turned into a metaphor for a society that is brutalised. People, ordinary people are caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence being fed by alienation and disassociation from all else outside this maelstrom.

In Sands there is a man who seeks to inspire a new generation – the revolutionary vanguard to a new United Ireland. Instead, his death served a cause far removed from the one for which he was prepared to die. The Armalite placed on the shelf in exchange for the off the shelf Armani.

Sands. Lost, trapped, deluded, martyr, betrayed.

With George Bush’s approval ratings, the surprise of the current Presidential election is that Barack Obama is not leading by a far greater margin. The Republican Party is fighting the prospect of losing the Presidential election and perhaps also in both Houses of Congress.

It is a testimony to the strength of character of John McCain and the level of trust and admiration for the man that he has stayed in the race. Polls have been wrong before, and the margins at the weekend before the Presidential election are close enough for McCain to be positive.

That said, it is more than likely that Obama will win on Tuesday. On that day, and with hindsight, the Democrats will congratulate themselves on making the right choice. That will remain to be proven by Obama in Office. Certainly, he won the Democratic nomination by appealing to the Democrat grassroots, more liberal (left) than the overall Democrat registered voter who largely backed Hilary Clinton. In the course of the Presidential campaign he has been more centrist, as far as we can tell.

Will Obama be the pragmatic President or go with the liberal flow, particularly if both Houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats? We don’t know. Despite the huge election spend and thousands of miles travelled on the campaign trail, Obama has stuck to a simple constant message that gives little about the future conduct of President Obama.

Obama has been criticised for keeping the press at bay and controlling a very disciplined campaign. That would be wrong. His team understands that political victory does not happen because you are right, but because you have a message that connects with people and (even more importantly) because you are better organised than your opponent.

If both candidates have offered change, what makes the more inexperienced and relatively unknown quality of Barack Obama more popular? Both represent how Americans would like to believe themselves to be. John McCain represents the brave, redoubtable spirit of ‘never say die’. He is an independent spirit, someone who does what is right rather than what is popular and someone prepared to stand up to vested interests, even those of his own Party.

And yet. John McCain’s heroism is of another war. As the Iraqi ‘surge’ pushes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan out of the headlines, and the battle for economic recovery is more pressing, John McCain’s strengths seem not to be for this era.

Instead it is Barack Obama who represents the moment. America is a ‘can do’ society. There is a belief that anyone can achieve success, no matter their background and no matter their start in life. It matters to America what others think of them: that it appears President Bush has made America unpopular abroad. It matters, equally, that Barack Obama is highly regarded overseas, which was seen to be demonstrated in Berlin – check out the Economist world poll, which reflects that goodwill. Obama aspires, inspires and, because of war and the economy, he is the man who at this moment most completely represents the American Dream. At this point in time, he represents what America wants to believe about itself and what it can achieve.

John McCain might very possibly be a great American President. It is not his time. The Republican Party needs to look at what McCain has achieved in this election, to the electorate he has reached outside the core Republican vote, and to the messages on which he has built his support. John McCain will not have lost the Presidential election, Barack Obama will have resolutely won.

If the Republican Party does not understand the desire of Americans for a change in their political process then it will be the biggest loser on Tuesday 4 November. While Sarah Palin might reassure the core Republican vote, that vote would not in itself elect John McCain, nor will it save Republicans from losing Congressional seats. A mean spirited Republican Party out to punish Democrats for their victory will only end up proving its own unelectability. The Republican Party needs to understand this for its own sake and to ensure that it holds Barack Obama to his message of reaching out across America to build the future, especially as it remains unclear what sort of future that will be.

Even if Democrats take Congress, House of Representatives and Senate, Obama will have been more than a significant part of that success. He be in a position to lead Congress, not follow. He will, in his own right, hold the mandate to fulfil the hopes and dreams of the American people. He will be able to shape America to his own ideal, whatever that is. Along with the American electorate we must all hope that an Obama Presidency will bring ‘change we can believe in’.

A closer look at this incident makes the controversy over the ‘homecoming’ parade for soldiers through the streets of Belfast on Sunday 2 November, and the Sinn Fein protest march/meeting more understandable. How?

The police were alerted to the elephant’s walking in Bangor by an anti-circus campaigner. This individual gleefully told radio listeners that he took this action to highlight opposition to the use of animals in circuses. Had he chosen to make a ‘ban circuses’ placard and walked with the elephants he may have looked a little silly and a lone voice. Why look silly when you can call the police and use the law?

We can be reasonably sure that the Parades Commission, set up to consider parades in Northern Ireland, was not set up to stop an elephant walking down the road. But it can. Just as it can stop vintage car rallies and cycling clubs on the public road – yes it can!

The difficulty for the authorities in establishing the Parades Commission was that to make exceptions would have also made it obvious that the legislation was aimed primarily at the curtailment of freedom of expression by one section of the community. By far the greatest numbers of Parades are annual commemorations by the Loyal Orders.

Protest events along the Loyal Order parade routes are not unusual. If people want to protest they have that right, within the law. Nor should we be surprised if Sinn Fein have decided to bring republicans onto the streets of Belfast to protest against the ‘homecoming’ parade.

The first difficulty for Sinn Fein is that this parade is for the Royal Irish Regiment, which retains strong local attachment and many have served gallantly. Local press have reported extensively on the RIR contribution, almost exclusively on a ‘human interest’ level.

The second difficulty is the purpose served by the protest. Mostly, Sinn Fein has been at sixes and sevens on this point. Protest, as with parade, must be notified to the Parades Commission. But in the media the protest has been variously stated to be about the War in Iraq, the killing of republicans by the British Army through the years of local conflict, the British presence in Irish, and so on.

Here is the point. The lack of consistency in reasons for the protest is down to a failure to dress up naked anti-British sentiment; blatant coat-trailing. In the final analysis the opposition to the parade is opposition to anything British. Just as the issue was not the elephant down the road, but the reason the elephant was in Bangor, so it is not the ‘homecoming’ parade for the RIR, but the fact that it is the British in Northern Ireland.

So too with Loyal Order Parades. Republican opposition was orchestrated, often with extreme violence, creating the controversy that led to a clamour for the regulation of parades enabling further diminishment of fundamental freedoms – now by the state, willingly and disgracefully undermining the Rule of Law. The elephant in the room is the sheer sectarian hatred of anything and everything British.

For those few from the Protestant community taking part in face to face dialogue the frustration in never being told what the issues were with specific respect to the parade under discussion is one reason why dialogue has been so elusive. There is little evidence from the dialogue that has taken place that there is any willingness to accommodate anything that celebrates, or represents, ‘Britishness’.

The IRA’s use of meetings between communities to collect information on Protestant community leaders, to ‘target’ them in military parlance, is clear evidence of the disingenuous manner in which republicans have worked on the parades issue.

Which then brings us back to the Strategic Review on Parades, currently considering its Interim Consultation Report. The Review group should note the not unsurprisingly bitter political row that has erupted over the ‘homecoming’ parade. That a parade has once again become a political punchbag is to be expected.

Political interference has prolonged the parades issue in Northern Ireland. The Parades Commission was itself a buck-passing exercise by the NIO, supported by the police – a firewall to take the heat off the Secretary of State and Chief Constable. It was born of political strategy and suckled by the political expediency of politicians who wanted to be seen as leading the fight (both sides), and by the demands of the ‘political process’ that meant not confronting the realities of rights and responsibilities as they should be within a society where the Rule of Law is paramount.

The current ‘thinking’ of the Parades Review group is that ‘parading’ should no longer be the responsibility of a Parades Commission, but that parading is placed within the Office of OFMDFM. How this will not result in political interference/dealing/brokering is something beyond imagination.

The Strategic Review seems to be predicated on a political deal on policing and justice taking place. That the Review on Parades depends on a political deal is itself a weakness and indicative of a fundamental flaw in strategic thinking. A principled and fair outcome to the resolution of parades issues should be a local matter and not reliant on externalities. If the Review itself depends on a political deal, then how is there hope that parades will not continue to be politicised and used to modulate tensions and division to the benefit of a few and to the detriment of all.

In a free society, the Rule of Law would regulate parade and protest. The OFMDFM should be capable of respecting the necessary conditions for a free society, without rancour.

The issue of parades in Northern Ireland is unlikely to be resolved while the elephant remains in the room.