Sam McBride: Having lost moral authority, now Stormont’s coronavirus plan is shambolic

Observing Thursday’s Stormont press conference (at which the News Letter was not allowed to ask questions) where the already complex and continually changing pandemic rules were re-written, a similar sentiment came to mind.

How can any government enforce laws which are so complex as to be incomprehensible?

In fact, how can any government enforce laws which government ministers cannot even adequately explain to us, the public?

How could a judge convict someone of breaking a law of which they were genuinely ignorant?

Northern Ireland is not entirely unique in struggling to sustain unprecedented peacetime restrictions after six months. Even the most eloquent communicators and the most respected political leaders would be incapable of bringing all the public along with them for so long.

But there is tragedy at the heart of what has gone wrong at Stormont.

There was incomparable public goodwill towards this administration, facing as it did the horrific task of grappling with decisions about who would live and who would die, and doing so in a fog of hazy information about a new disease which even the world’s greatest virologists only partially understood.

In March, the TUV leader Jim Allister brought silence to the Assembly chamber when he asked about a 32-year-old mother whose family had contacted him because she had been told that her cancer treatment would end due to difficult decisions as to who would be treated. Last month the young mother died.

Despite Mr Allister being Michelle O’Neill’s bitterest opponent, when he raised that case it reduced the Sinn Féin minister to public tears. While some people will be cynical about any public emotion from a politician, there is no reason to believe that Ms O’Neill’s reaction was anything other than the genuine human emotion of a deputy First Minister just three months into her post being faced with the enormity of the decisions she was taking.

Notwithstanding notable moments where politics was not put on hold, the executive acquired a degree of cross-community public support to which Stormont’s leaders have long been unaccustomed.

In would be an exaggeration to say that in that period devolution flourished, but if politicians have to share the blame when the response to a crisis is inadequate then they must share in some of the praise when Northern Ireland, despite having the greatest health service crisis going into the pandemic, has so far had the best outcome in the UK (comparisons with RoI are difficult because of how data is recorded).

However, the public harmony which had existed during most of the worst of the pandemic instantly turned to discord on the last day of June. By attending the huge funeral for former IRA intelligence chief Bobby Storey, Ms O’Neill and most of her senior colleagues flagrantly disregarded what she had told the public was imperative to save lives.

As set out in these pages in July, the funeral broke at least 10 areas of either Ms O’Neill’s guidance or regulations.

They did not do so in secret, but invited the cameras in to see what they were doing, telling journalists where they could film and designating press officers with whom to liaise at the vast event.

Despite Stormont’s guidance saying clearly at that point that “wakes should not be held”, senior Sinn Fein MLA Martina Anderson defended the large wake, sowing confusion by saying that wakes could be held and she had enabled them. Rather than some solo run quickly corrected by the party, Sinn Féin refused to comment on her inaccurate statement.

Two and a half months on, the police have not charged a single person for what happened at the funeral and will not even discuss the issue.

In response, Mrs Foster refused to partake in joint press conferences with Ms O’Neill, arguing that her actions meant that her words had no credibility. After ten weeks of waiting for an apology which never came, Mrs Foster relented this week.

It is striking that despite growing difficulties in understanding the ever more complex rules, when the Health Minister Robin Swann did these press conferences over recent weeks there was clarity but the moment that Stormont’s leaders returned there was confusion.

The press conference began badly – not only were some journalists excluded, but it was then delayed by an hour and a half and the journalists who were allowed to ask a question were prevented from asking follow-up questions crucial to establishing clarity.

They also were not given the Executive statement in advance to prepare questions around the detail of what had been announced, while the fact that Ms O’Neill was appearing for the first time since the funeral meant that she would inevitably be questioned on that issue.

At the heart of the announcement was a contradictory message: Covid is spreading faster and so localised restrictions are being imposed; yet in those same areas non-food pubs and soft play areas for children are to be opened.

As Young Unionist Nathan Redmond said caustically: “You’re telling me I can’t go round to my gran’s house but I can take her to Thompsons [nightclub, converted to a bar]”.

When it arrived, the written executive statement was even more confusing. It said that there should be no “unnecessary” journeys outside restricted postcodes. But it did not define “unnecessary”. After weeks of executive ministers urging the public to support local businesses, are shopping trips or holidays encouraged or now discouraged?

It was also unclear about travelling between postcodes.

And is it fine to arrange to meet your family at a pub or a cafe, but not in their own home? None of this can be clarified because the legislation – which will become the 72nd separate piece of Northern Ireland coronavirus legislation – is not yet ready.

The unspoken impression given by Stormont is that the key determinant for whether restrictions will be eased is whether money can be spent within a building.

As SDLP MP Claire Hanna observed, there is here an inequality – those who can afford to eat out, or visit a soft play area, can socialise, but those who could only do so in their homes cannot.

Any restrictions will inevitably involve hard cases, and a public weary of the disruption to their lives will in some cases rail against a reversal of the move out of lockdown.

But it is the scale of the confusion with Stormont’s new rules which is problematic for those seeking to do the right thing. The public range from those hyper-sensitive to Covid and alarmed that not enough is being done to those who think they are invincible because they are young and selfishly think they can survive covid, to the conspiracy theorists beyond reaching with any logical message. Yet the bulk of the population is still in the category of wanting to do the right thing but increasingly confused about what they are being asked to do.

Even facing widespread confusion, by yesterday afternoon neither Mrs Foster nor Ms O’Neill had come forward to do any interviews or issue a statement of clarity.

This week’s announcement is openly predicated on an admission that Stormont cannot enforce its existing law – Mrs Foster referred to a serious problem of Covid spreading from socialising in people’s homes, yet few of those doing so have been brought to court or fined.

Instead of enforcing those existing restrictions, the Executive has invented another law. But if the last law wasn’t enforced, why would those who felt free to ignore it now feel compelled to heed the new law?

Having squandered unprecedented public goodwill, this executive increasingly looks shambolic at a time where incompetence could be deadly.

Sam McBride: Despite Sinn Féin’s Trumpian claims, Storey funeral involved at least 10 breaches of public health advice

Sam McBride: Sinn Féin is now sacrificing public health advice on the altar of self-protection

Sam McBride: Who can restore the broken authority of the Northern Ireland Civil Service?

Sam McBride: Mammon and morality are uneasy bedfellows, as Northern Ireland’s relationship with China’s authoritarian rulers shows

Sam McBride: Arlene Foster, the Attorney General, and why she backed a controversial bill which provoked DUP rebellion

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