Dual mandate purge risks talent exodus
THERE is a problem brewing next year for the DUP, and consequently for Northern Ireland.
The sudden, and barely challenged, mood against double-jobbing means that the DUP is set to lose almost all of its top talent from Stormont.
And yet, simultaneously, the DUP remains narrow favourite to emerge from the assembly elections as the largest party.
The certainty of the first of these scenarios added to the probability of the second means that the province's government is likely to end up under the influence of a less talented and less experienced DUP.
Even DUP critics concede that the party has able and experienced MPs such as Nigel Dodds, Jeffrey Donaldson, Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson.
Mr Wilson, as finance minister for example, has had the confidence to be an almost lone voice against the tsunami of public-spending-must-never-be-cut populism.
Yet Stormont will lose such independence when Mr Wilson stands down in line with the party's commitment on double jobbing, allowing him to hold on to his Westminster seat.
At the same time that these senior DUP figures are departing the assembly (some such as Mr Donaldson are already gone), the party will be working towards what they expect to be a successful Stormont election.
If the recent general election result is reflected in that assembly poll, the DUP will shade it as the largest party in number of seats.
Sinn Fein had a fractionally larger overall vote in May, but if replicated at Stormont that will not be enough for them to emerge with most seats (republican votes are too heavily concentrated in the west of the province for them to emerge with the optimum number of seats under the STV proportional vote system).
Further, the (highly irresponsible and cynical, in the eyes of its unionist opponents) alteration after St Andrews that made a Sinn Fein first minister possible may consolidate the DUP vote in a bid to prevent Martin McGuinness achieving that position.
If so, the DUP will be entering Stormont with 30 or more MLAs, many of whom are unknown.
To date, the DUP has been dominated by a powerful leadership, one that is confident enough to be politically bold (it is barely conceivable that less experienced personalities would have made the leap into power sharing).
For all the populism of the leadership's rhetoric, the formidably intelligent Peter Robinson knew that many measures that are unpopular are also indispensable to good governance.
Now that he has been evicted from Westminster, Mr Robinson is free to stay on at Stormont if he chooses to stand for re-election. But he has been so battered by events that it seems unlikely he will wield the influence that he did.
That still leaves other talented DUP MLAs such as Peter Weir and Jim Wells, but nothing like the level of experience that there was.
This is not to suggest that the other parties are bursting with talent. But the DUP’s position at
Stormont is particularly vulnerable given its large number of seats and its sudden loss of most of its top team.
And this at a time when the assembly, with the devolution of policing and justice, is increasingly powerful.
Earlier this year Political Review looked in depth at the question of whether double jobbing was in fact necessarily a bad thing.
But it remains a question that has had barely any examination, amid a sudden consensus in the media and political world that dual mandates must be stopped.
Days after our report, the BBC appeared to continue to assume that dual mandates were unacceptable, in a detailed report about the fact that around 60 MLAs were still councillors.
The argument against being both an MP and an MLA is at least a strong one – primarily that you cannot be in two places at once.
But the argument against dual membership of both Stormont and a council is dubious at best, and yet it is gaining traction as Dawn Purvis’s bill progresses through the assembly.
Her proposed ban would mean that councillors were able to hold any other full-time job that you can imagine except the directly relevant job of full-time politician.
Our councils are part-time, so precisely why is it acceptable (indeed necessary) to have a daytime job, as a doctor or bricklayer, but not a daytime job as assembly member?
We are often told that dual mandates are preventing new talent from emerging, but is it really true that there is a huge well of repressed talent?
Or is it the truth that a public that is quick to criticise politicians is not so quick to put itself on the line?
Even if the proposed 11-council Review of Public Administration does one day go ahead, there will be 460 councillors across the province, a small drop from our existing 582.
They will have powers over important matters such as planning.
Yet now there is a growing likelihood that our councils will be robbed of the experience of dozens of MLAs.
And yet there is no concrete proof that the public is remotely worried about dual mandates.
Indeed, there is plenty of the evidence to the contrary – that they value politicians who have experience.
All of the 17 MPs who were elected while also an MLA won their (often large) Westminster majorities despite being MLAs. In not a single case that I can think of was an MP’s vote affected by double jobbing.
MPs and MLAs no longer receive extra salary if they are a member of two parliaments. They do however still get extra allowances.
A sensible compromise is to remove all the extra allowances and ensure that joint MLAs and MPs and their offices no longer receive an extra penny out of their joint membership.
If the politicians still want to persevere with their dual mandate at no extra cost to the taxpayer, and their voters endorse such – well then that’s democracy.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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