Stormont deal is yet another shambolic and embarassing false dawn for NI

We had upbeat messages from the five participating executive parties, all fawned over by a press corps, eager to accommodate and propagate the false narrative and repeated mantra that to solve all of the problems in NI all that was needed was for Stormont to return.

This was shameful coercion and blackmail from the Secretary of State (and interference from the Irish Government in an internal matter of this part of the UK), of withholding funding for the NHS, tackling waiting lists and rescuing many schools from insolvency unless an executive was formed.

Red lines disappeared into a flurry of spin, groundless, audacious claims were made, and the clamour for power usurped any rational analysis of what exactly was on offer – how was it to be funded, when it was to be funded? Pretty basic stuff you would think.

With great anticipation, the PM swept in to add his bluster and exuberance to the circus. Hair as normal, nonplussed, pitted against the ferocious gales on the hill, but inside as well as outside a storm was brewing.

This most fundamental question of funding became front-and-centre of the whole sorry pantomime.

It soon emerged to all those signed up to this hastily-cobbled deal, the awful truth, no budget was agreed, nor allocation of same, nor indeed, with any specified time-frame or commitment!

The great expectations of a new decade have joined the false dawns of the many gone before.

An administration created to appease and reward terrorism in return for a bomb-free London is as immoral as it is unworkable.

Republicans milk each stage; crises and drama designed deliberately to gain more concessions from an ever-compliant British Government, fearful of damaging the insultingly-named ‘peace process’.

If Stormont is the answer, then the question is surely wrong.

It is an embarrassment to the people of NI who deserve so much more.

Councillor Stephen Cooper, TUV, Comber