A deal consisting of more fudge, fog and ambiguity is last thing we need

‘The essence of this Agreement, the vision which must inspire our leadership, is our shared belief that the civic values of respect, mutuality, fairness and justice must take precedence over those narrow values that too often manifest in division. This document signals our resolve to engender the sea change so longed for by our community – a new beginning, an opportunity to move forward with a real sense of hope and purpose. Our pledge is that together we will use the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister to lead by example and through cooperation and common purpose, to ensure that the spirit, vision and promise of the document is fulfilled.’

A year later, Fresh Start had crumbled into stale leftovers.

In the next few days there’s the possibility of another preamble to yet another agreement: another few paragraphs of honeyed, calculated, promises, pledges and commitments, cobbled together in an effort to convince us that the parties really are serious this time. We’ve even been promised a visit from Theresa May; although, to be honest, I can’t imagine that May’s presence in any meeting, on any subject, in any part of the United Kingdom would make any difference at all.

I tailed off a column on January 29 with the words, ‘A deal, of sorts, is certainly possible in the next few weeks, but it won’t have either substance or durability’. That remains my view.

A deal ‘of sorts,’ as I’ve said many, many times, has been possible for almost a year. But it’s quite clear that a deal ‘of sorts’ serves no purpose. If there is to be a deal it has to be one in which the DUP and Sinn Fein are ruthlessly honest with each other and ruthlessly honest with us.

Northern Ireland needs to be governed. It needs very difficult, very uncomfortable decisions made. If the parties are incapable of accepting that challenge and opt, yet again, for ambiguity, fudge, fog and can-kicking, then it will only be a matter of months before another crisis. The people of Northern Ireland deserve better than that.

For the life of me I still don’t understand how a mutually acceptable deal is possible on an Irish language act. What both Sinn Fein and Irish language lobbyists have been arguing for strikes me as unacceptable to the broadest swathe of unionism; so unacceptable, in fact, that I can’t imagine they’d be bought off with legislation promoting Ulster-Scots language and culture.

That has never been a political/electoral priority for unionism and I don’t see it becoming one just because Sinn Fein get what they want on Irish language. They are not like-for-like issues.

I’m not saying that compromise is impossible: but I am saying that a compromise based on, ‘you got this, so we must get that,’ is both fundamentally and debilitatingly stupid. You don’t solve a problem by the Newtonian approach of introducing an equal and opposite problem.

I’ve written before that compromise on some respect/equality issues – like same-sex marriage, for example – is possible, particularly if the parties can reach agreement on the use of the petition of concern. They had already signed up to a voluntary protocol in Fresh Start, but that needs to be beefed up, with clear definitions and specific uses written into the Assembly’s Standing Orders.

There will be a temptation to kick it down the road, of course, not least because the DUP’s evangelical wing will have concerns; but, as I keep saying, ambiguity and fog are the worst enemies of long-term consensus and stability.

In a column on January 15, I wrote, ‘Lay the blame for the present failure where you like, yet the fact remains that the collapse of the GFA would hit us all – and hit us hard. So the DUP and Sinn Fein need to focus on the consequences of not cutting a deal. That’s all that matters now’.

That’s what’ll they’ll be doing over the next week. This is endgame territory. If they cannot cut the deal then they cannot shy away from the conclusion that the GFA is officially, formally dead. And once it goes down it will be a generation at least – if at all – before there is an alternative in place.

Yet the worst thing they can do now is push the pieces of the jigsaw together and hope that it somehow morphs into a coherent whole; or, at the very least, gives the impression of an attractive picture. The other thing which needs to be avoided is a bundle of cash being made available because the two governments still believe that the GFA is, ‘too big, too important, to be seen to have failed’. What has bedeviled the GFA – and every other additional deal since then – has been mutual distrust, contradictory interpretations of what was supposedly agreed and competing views of what constitutes stability. The test of the latest deal – if there is one – is whether those bedevilments have been exorcised.

I wrote, on January 29, ‘My overall assessment remains relentlessly gloomy. We are still trying to pretend the GFA has a purpose in terms of reconciliation and progress here. It doesn’t’. I still believe that; and although I’d be happy to be proved wrong, my greatest fear remains that we’re heading towards another pointless, clanking, self-deluding agreement between two parties who detest each other.