Sam McBride: In defence of MLAs – they’re not all scoundrels, and we’re losing them

That’s the question facing many MLAs. And to make it worse, only the least self-aware of their number is expecting any public understanding of their situation, and certainly not any sympathy.

With the exception of a 46-minute session where MLAs signed the roll after the last election, it is now 970 days since the Assembly last sat.

Depending on one’s political perspective, it is either Sinn Féin or the DUP’s fault that Stormont is not operating – although, regardless of whether Sinn Féin’s reasons for toppling Stormont were valid, the DUP can point to the fact that it never walked away from the institution.

But what is incontrovertible is that there is virtually nothing which the other parties – the UUP, SDLP, Alliance, Greens, TUV, PBP and independent Claire Sugden – can do to restore devolution.

The system instigated by the Belfast Agreement gives each of the DUP and Sinn Féin, as the largest parties, a veto over whether devolution can function.

That means that 35 of the Assembly’s 90 MLAs are powerless to resolve the impasse. Yet many of the public – understandably unaware of the finer points of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as amended by the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006 – simply view all MLAs as feckless workshy scoundrels.

Aware of how deeply unpopular our politicians now are, you are unlikely to hear MLAs – even from the smaller parties – complaining too vociferously about this in interviews.

Privately, some MLAs speak about their situation with a depressive frustration. Although they are still able to continue with constituency business, and that is a significant element of any politician’s role, they were elected not to be glorified councillors but as legislators who would scrutinise legislation, set budgets and hold both civil servants and each other to account.

Quite logically, the government belatedly cut their pay from £50,000 to £35,888 – a compromise between the fact that they continue to do some work, but are not doing their full jobs, and also the reality that if all salaries are stopped then MLAs will have to find other work.

Having done so, there is the potential that much of the political class would simply leave politics, never to return.

Some observers believe that would be good, sweeping out the deadwood and bringing in new people unshackled to the past.

But while new voices can inject energy, there is also a loss of institutional memory – not just of how politics operates in the basics such as scrutinising the work of departments, but in being aware of past mistakes. Solutions which on the outside can seem easy can crumple under the wisdom of someone who remembers what happened the last time that approach was tried.

Just as the military sometimes prefer to allow terrorist leadership structures to remain in place because over time they can moderate as they are confronted with reality, so politicians can become more pragmatic as they see the unachievable nature of their more extreme ideas.

Some of the dozier MLAs who would be unlikely to earn £35,888 – the current reduced salary – in any other line of work are probably quite happy, just as they were happy to be unthinking voting-fodder for their parties when Stormont was functioning. But over recent months, there has been a stream of MLAs either leaving the Assembly or leaving politics entirely. There are rumours of other MLAs – at least one of whom is very senior – considering doing likewise.

Last week the former Green Party leader Steven Agnew announced that he was leaving politics to become head of the Northern Ireland Renewables Industry Group. Mr Agnew was not only one of the most popular MLAs at Stormont, but also a capable exponent of left-wing political views, someone who was arguably the most consistently left wing voice in the chamber until the arrival of People Before Profit.

In June the DUP’s Simon Hamilton – a former finance minister, health minister and economy minister – walked away from politics to become chief executive of Belfast Chamber of Commerce.

Although he had admitted to the RHI Inquiry that he had a role in leaking emails naming some of his civil servants, something which dented his reputation, the former accountant was a major a moderating presence at the top of the DUP.

The party had already lost Alastair Ross, an unusually free-thinking DUP member with libertarian views who impressed senior police officers and others during his chairmanship of the Justice Committee and was likely to have been a future minister, when he walked away from politics even before the 2017 Assembly election. Paul Girvan also left the Assembly when elected as an MP in June 2017.

And behind the scenes, the party lost its key strategic thinker, special adviser Richard Bullick, as a direct result of Stormont’s collapse.

Of the 11 MLAs who have quit since the last election, the majority – six – have been in Sinn Féin, even though the party’s wage policy means that none of its MLAs have actually lost a penny as a result of the governance vacuum.

Many of the MLAs it has lost – Ian Milne, Barry McElduff, Elisha McCallion and Michaela Boyle were not in its top tier of talent – which as the perceptive republican commentator Chris Donnelly has for years highlighted is significantly beneath what should be at the disposal of a party of Sinn Féin’s size, in contrast to its team in the Dáil.

However, the party has also lost two significant and capable figures – Michelle Gildernew, who had to leave Stormont after being elected to Westminster in June 2017 – and Chris Hazzard, who left for the same reason.

In Alliance, leader Naomi Long, one of Stormont’s most capable figures, has left the Assembly after deciding to stand in the European election and winning a seat – something unlikely to have been contemplated had devolution been functioning.

Her predecessor as leader, the former justice minister David Ford, had already retired from politics last June, a year and a half into the Stormont impasse.

The SDLP’s Daniel McCrossan, one of the new generation of politicians with significant potential, is still an MLA but has returned to university to start a postgraduate business degree.

Although any profession will always have a certain churn, there is a clear trend both in the numbers of those leaving Stormont and the fact that so many of them are above the Stormont average in terms of their ability and seniority.

That is not to denigrate the MLAs who are taking their place. But even if person for person each of them is of the same calibre, starting off from scratch in a new job immediately involves a significant loss of experience.

Cumulatively, the departures suggest a significant problem, and that is likely to be exacerbated unless there is a sudden breakthrough in talks which no longer even seem to be happening.

If Stormont does return, another factor will deter some of those who could contribute the most to improving the standard of government.

Northern Ireland politics has descended to the level of a tribal bear pit. That is unattractive to many capable people, just as it was during the Troubles.

If devolution can be restored and is to work better than it did when last functioning, the structures which contributed to inertia and worse will need to be amended.

But that will only be part of the equation – there will need to be capable people to work those structures.