Editorial: It is hard for Stormont to agree anything so its plan for government is progress, but seems unlikely to tackle big challenges

As we have reported in recent days, Hilary Benn gave a speech at the weekend that was troubling from a unionist perspective.

​During that speech, the Northern Ireland secretary made a reference to the difficulty of mandatory coalition, and acknowledged how hard it would be to hold power permanently with his political enemies in Westminster.

But he quickly moved on from that brief display of sympathy for the dysfunctional nature of the Stormont system to making an implied threat that the UK and Irish governments would work together to go forward if the assembly came down again. Reward, in other words, for the only nationalists likely to pull it down – Sinn Fein.

Within the context of an utterly abnormal set-up in which the political irreconcilables of the DUP and SF are bound together in office in perpetuity, it is impressive that we have government here at all. And, for most of the time since 1998, we have had local government, under those trying conditions.

It is welcome therefore that there is now a Stormont Programme for Government in Northern Ireland, the first one in more than a decade. It is hardly surprising that it is a vague list in which the parties have sought to minimise disagreement. Even so, how this will all come to fruition? Consider the decision to make violence against women and girls one of the nine priorities. Such violence is outrageous, must be stopped and punished severely, but is it a higher priority than the violence there is among men?

And seeking safer communities is a laudable aim, but why are we as a society unable to mention the scourge of terror and paramilitaries? Republicans alone are trying to murder people, loyalists are often engaged in criminality.

Major reform of public services is needed in NI, and fiscal discipline. But this document gives little hope that we will tackle our big problems.