Ben Lowry: The DUP got no credit for trying to get businesses back to normal

The criticism is fair, but there has been a fair amount of hypocrisy too.

Passionate supporters of Northern Ireland’s mandatory coalition system of government were among the loudest critics of the indecision. But enforced power sharing inevitably involves a rainbow coalition of political irreconcilables.

As other observers have remarked, imagine how impossible it would be if Joe Biden and Donald Trump had to share power.

The Stormont system was bad enough even before one party was allowed to collapse Stormont for three years after 2017 until its political demands were met.

Arlene Foster insisted weeks ago that restrictions would end this weekend. The DUP had the legal power to ensure that, but in the end it seemed to feel it lacked political capital to implement that power.

By being so emphatic, Mrs Foster had set up another political retreat, of which her party has made more than a few in recent years.

Yet the DUP had good reasons to want a time limit on lockdown.

In fact, the debate over lockdown has been woefully inadequate since the first restrictions began in March.

It was apparent by the end of that month the Covid-19 was overwhelmingly a virus that worst affected people who were very old or otherwise very ill.

It was apparent by the end of that month that lockdown had grossly unfair outcomes.

It caused the most harm to those who could not work from home (often the less well paid), those who lack gardens (the less well paid) and those who work in the private, not public, sector (also the less well paid).

It was clear in March that lockdown a far greater impact on people who lack social connections, thus putting at risk of chronic loneliness those who are already prone to the horror of loneliness, and the mental and physical damage it inflicts.

It was also obvious at the end of March that while young people are at far, far less risk of a bad Covid outcome than people over 50, it is those same young people whose educational or early job prospects were being disproportionately harmed.

Eight months later, evidence of all of the above has been reaffirmed with time.

Still we get graphic reportage from hospitals, which implies that battling Covid is the only political and moral consideration.

Controlling coronavirus is of course a huge challenge, but so is the ruin of sectors of the economy.

The DUP was the only party that seemed for a while to elevate business concerns to the front rank.

Most of us are employed by someone else. Very few people actually start up a shop or cafe or bar or manufacturing company.

Yet such entrepreneurs not only take big risks that most of us would not dare take, they improve our lives by providing services we need.

Since Covid, many businesses have devised clever ways to keep customers safe. A restaurant I know has knocked through a window to create a takeaway counter.

Yet still the decision makers can seem insensitive as to the disastrous impact of their restrictions.

Many politicians pretend to show such empathy by demanding yet more money from the Treasury to support such businesses and by complaining furiously when such payments are delayed.

But that is rather cowardly.

It implies that there is a win-win situation in which business can be kept closed indefinitely and the government can pay indefinitely, which it plainly can’t.

No society on earth could fund a massive public sector and much of the private sector at the same time.

Meanwhile, no politician — in London, Dublin or Belfast — has ever suggested that the public sector might have to suffer modestly, such as a pay freeze for non frontline staff to help fund furlough.

Given that public sector wages are a huge proportion of government spending, such reticence brings forward the day that the rest of us will be given a vast bill.

Among the options that are being talked about as a way to pay for this financial disaster are a wealth tax, that could hit people with assets as modest as £100,000.

Think of the injustice of, say, an elderly person who despite average wages was prudent all their working life and built up a lump sum in excess of £100k, then perhaps having to pay perhaps a lump sum out of that just because politicians — themselves paid by the public purse — are determined that the public sector is wholly exempt from any pain.

Meanwhile the DUP seemed to get no credit for trying to reopen things.

Several business people that I heard on the airwaves blamed “both sides” for not making a decision.

That suggests that they think politicians who want them to be able to open their business deserve as much denunciation as those who think that lockdowns can continue indefinitely?

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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