Owen Polley: The politics of the begging bowl suits Irish nationalists but unionists should rise above such an approach

The deputy first minister claimed this did not amount to “going to the government with a begging bowl,” but she and Michelle O’Neill were simply asking Labour to, “step up and support us”. That was a more positive spin on what was effectively the same thing. It’s just not a begging bowl if you see it as your due.

The two ministers did not know, before the meeting, that the Treasury intended to pause city deals for several regions and end the fantasy that it would fund Casement Park for Euro 2028. Those commitments may have been entered into by a dying government, but they will still contribute to the Stormont executive’s sense of grievance.

There are signs, though, that Northern Ireland is wising up to its politicians’ entitled attitude. Most of the parties prefer to ascribe our problems to a ‘lack of investment’ from Westminster, rather than face up to their own repeated failures to reform services here or take difficult cash saving decisions.

The Programme for Government, published last Monday, did not inspire much faith that this way of working was set to change. In fact, when you considered that the executive returned in February, it was staggering that it took over seven months to assemble this collection of buzzwords, aspirations and statements of the obvious.

Those failings were pointed out by the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole, who criticised the document’s lack of, “clear targets and clear plans to deliver”.

Thanks to his party’s poor performance in the last assembly election, Mr O’Toole finds himself as the leader of the official Opposition at Stormont. What a shame that the Ulster Unionists spurned the chance to fill that role.

Instead of holding the executive to account for its failures, and building up credibility by providing an honest, common-sense alternative, the UUP bound itself to the larger parties, while taking its own curious approach to collective responsibility.

If the health minister and party leader, Mike Nesbitt, actually tries to fix the health service, rather than burying the hard work beneath fresh reports and reviews, his efforts will probably be thwarted by political rivals.

In any case, the UUP has so far shown little inclination to diverge from the entitlement culture that the rest of the parties are so wedded to.

There are signs, though, that the consensus around that attitude is breaking down in Northern Ireland more generally. For example, the think-tank Pivotal recently appealed to the executive to manage its budget, rather than constantly issue complaints that it was underfunded.

In a review of seven months of restored devolution, it noted that, “ministers need to accept responsibility for operating within a budget they themselves have agreed. Blaming a lack of funding for all difficulties and failings is not appropriate”.

The executive, it concluded, should explore, “options for raising revenues locally”. And, failing that, it should be “transparent with the public about the consequences for public services”.

The think-tank’s arguments were not far away from Dr Esmond Birnie’s analysis of the Programme for Government, published by the News Letter last week. The University of Ulster academic wrote that it was ‘far from clear’ that the parties were justified in their ‘mantra’ that Northern Ireland had been underfunded consistently.

“We may not have made the best use of the money which we had,” he concluded, and “not enough attention” was paid by our politicians to making the public sector more efficient.

This kind of heresy is beginning to find a readier audience, particularly now Labour is in government rather than the supposedly rapacious Tories. In response to a suggestion that we would be funded more lavishly by Dublin, the columnist, Newton Emerson, recently tweeted that, “There’s plenty of money. Devolved power-sharing has just proved incapable of managing it.”

That spirit of realism hasn’t reached Stormont yet.

Every party, without exception, attacked the government viciously for stopping winter fuel payments to pensioners. There are strong arguments that Keir Starmer shouldn’t single that subsidy out, but it was telling that, while the executive loudly demanded the prime minister reverse his policy, it will nevertheless implement it.

In other words, our politicians were certainly not willing to find savings and pay for the benefit themselves. As usual, the attitude is that hard decisions are none of their responsibility, and their job is instead to dole out the Treasury’s cash in ever greater quantities.

For nationalists, constantly blaming Westminster for the executive’s failures is appealing, because it undermines the idea that we are better off in the UK. It’s particularly disappointing that unionist parties are not prepared to rise above this standard of debate about Stormont’s finances.

Fortunately, people in Northern Ireland are becoming more cynical about that way of thinking.

They know that when the executive wastes money, or insists on maintaining perks that do not exist in the rest of the UK, it means less cash for other services. And they know that many of our problems are grounded in ministers’ failure to make difficult decisions that, elsewhere, were taken long ago.

If a party, and in particular a unionist party, was to catch up and tell those voters the truth, that would surely have a potential formula for success.