Owen Polley: It would be outrageous to sideline unionists, still the biggest group in Stormont

(Scroll down for a link to that article: ‘Unionists face dilemma - deal is progress against protocol but no comprehensive solution,' March 2)

It leaves Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods and fails to repair the damage that the Protocol did to the Union. I will write more about this in coming weeks. Against this context, unionism is dealing with multiple challenges, such as the way in which nationalists try to use Stormont to make NI increasingly separate from Great Britain. Last week, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster examined the effectiveness of our devolved institutions.

The DUP’s boycott of power-sharing has prompted some influential voices, including the Alliance Party and former NI Secretary Brandon Lewis, to suggest that the Belfast Agreement could be changed. They argue that unionists and nationalists should no longer wield a veto, because it leads to periods of political stalemate and freezes out ‘middle ground’ politicians who do not take a stance on our constitutional position.

Considering these proposals, the historian and former adviser to David Trimble, Lord Bew, told the committee that there was “no possibility” of changing fundamental aspects of the agreement. In the course of setting out this view, he made comments about devolution that were particularly interesting.

“I’ve never really believed that devolution anywhere was about better governance. There are political, psychological, communal reasons why you have to do it,” the peer argued. “Throughout the rest of the UK, it’s very hard to point to results in education, health which are superior to (what) previously existed under an old-style Westminster government. I… regard it as a political necessity which exists for political reasons.”

That was a fair point, and it summed up why I’ve argued previously that unionists should be, at best, reluctant rather than enthusiastic devolutionists. In most respects, devolution has been bad for Northern Ireland and unionism since 1921, cementing our status as a ‘place apart’ from the rest of the UK. Unfortunately, though, the agreement in 1998 coincided with a wider, nationwide change, that saw Scotland and Wales gain devolved institutions.

That was a self-destructive decision by Tony Blair’s government that weakened the Union, even though it was intended, in the words of former defence secretary, George Robertson, to “kill nationalism stone dead”. By now, though, the institutions it created are firmly entrenched and bound up with people’s regional identities.

It is almost unthinkable that the government would dispense with the devolved bodies in Cardiff and Edinburgh in the foreseeable future. The Northern Ireland Executive, with its history of long periods of suspension, is slightly different. Lord Bew believes that its political role is primarily to provide ‘peace and stability’, rather than good government.

I’ve made a similar argument in this column. “An on-again off-again assembly made politicians feel important and stopped one… party from encouraging violence. It was costly and achieved almost nothing on its own terms, but it helped keep Northern Ireland relatively peaceful and stable, so we tolerated it.”

It was possible, mostly, for people to get on with their lives and ignore Stormont. That became more difficult during lockdown when local ministers, including terror apologists from Sinn Fein, confined us to our homes and told us exactly what we could or couldn’t do, continuing to apply restrictions while they were eased in the rest of the UK. It’s easy now to forget that experience, but it puts glib arguments about the ‘benefits’ of getting power-sharing back into context. The ‘Lockdown Files’ published this week in the Daily Telegraph show how easy it is for any tier of government to start overreaching into our lives, based on political factors rather than necessity. Things are even more serious when the institutions in question are as ineffective and mediocre as Northern Ireland’s.

During Sinn Fein’s three year boycott of the Assembly, and more recently, though, we’ve seen that Westminster outright refuses to take back the powers it devolved to Stormont, even when the institutions are not working. It is prepared to intervene on occasional issues, but only when it believes there is no danger of annoying nationalists.

That means that, effectively, there is no viable alternative to Stormont. The only other option is to go without a layer of government completely, which, admittedly, has been perfectly possible for long periods, demonstrating how poorly we are served by the executive.

In the absence of devolution, though, slower routine decisions and little inconveniences will inevitably start to irk voters.

This is a particularly bad time, as Lord Bew implied, to consider changing the safeguards in the Belfast Agreement. The Protocol has already caused unionists to examine whether the 1998 deal genuinely protected their place in the UK and ensured that their status could not be changed without a referendum.

If the system was reformed, almost as soon as unionism became a minority and the interests of nationalists coincided with the outlook of Alliance, it would seem like an attempt to rig power-sharing. For years, separatists poured scorn on the idea that Stormont could operate through majority voting, or even use a weighted majority system, to avoid one part of the community exercising a veto.

The Alliance Party, which held its conference at the weekend, will carp and hector about this issue, but its reasoning is typically empty. The arrogance and self-regard of its representatives seems to grow almost daily, with its high profile MLA, Sorcha Eastwood, telling the BBC’s Nolan Live last week that she and her colleagues ‘speak for Northern Ireland’. It might seem like that on social media echo-chambers, but even as it enjoyed unprecedented successes last year, Alliance claimed just 13.5% of the vote.

Devolution will almost certainly resume at some point and it will continue to deliver poor government. The idea that unionists, who are still the biggest group at the Assembly, could or should be sidelined in this system is outrageous, particularly in light of the ongoing Irish Sea border.

Owen Polley on March 2: Unionists face dilemma - deal is progress against protocol but no comprehensive solution