Senator George Mitchell, Bill Clinton's emissary here on the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, said shortly after the Agreement was signed that he would like to come back at some later date, and to bring his children with him so that they could witness devolution and power-sharing in action at Stormont. Should he come over to see us these days, he would be disappointed to observe that the institutions which followed upon the Agreement are still somewhat fragile. As a realisation of this reality First Minister Peter Robinson told his Party Conference last weekend that he could not guarantee the continuing existence of the power-sharing Executive and the Assembly. He insisted, however, that the DUP was not in the business of 'walking away'.
Most of the onslaughts delivered at the Conference were directed against fellow unionists in the Ulster Unionist Party and in Jim Allister's True Unionist Voice (TUV). The UUP were lambasted for their alliance with the British Tories, who, or so David Cameron maintains, propose to contest all 18 constituencies in the next Westminster election, due in May or June 2010. The DUP are mindful that inter-Unionist factionism let in Sinn Féin in Fermanagh-South Tyrone and the SDLP in South Belfast in the 2005 election, and whilst the Tory-UUP arrangement is unlikely to make much improvement for the UUP in terms of seats won, the rivalry between the DUP and UUP is 'an unnecessary dimunition of the unionist representation' as a DUP leader has put it. There is an instinctive yearning among many grass roots unionists for some sort of a pact. Elections can be divisive processes.
A greater threat is posed by Mr Allister's TUV. Allister, a former DUP representative in the European Parliament, opposes power-sharing with Sinn Féin, and in the few electoral interventions that it has made thus far, has delivered some stinging blows to the DUP. In a council by-election in Dromore, Co Down, the TUV polled about 10% of the vote, not a lot, but enough to see the DUP candidate who topped the poll being displaced by the UUP candidate after the TUV vote transferred virtually en masse to the Ulster Unionists. In June this year, Mr Allister polled some 66,000 votes in the European elections, knocking the DUP candidate into third place with their candidate having to sweat at the count to secure the third of the three seats on offer. The DUP had always hitherto topped the Euro poll with Dr Ian Paisley.
Mr Allister has pledged to contest the North Antrim seat in the next Westminster election. North Antrim has been held by Dr Ian Paisley for many years and so seriously do the DUP take the threat that they might run Dr Paisley as the Party candidate, rather than Ian junior as has been anticipated. This could be a pivotal contest.
According to the protocals the next Assembly elections are to be held in 2011, assuming that the Assembly is still in business. It would seem that Mr Allister hopes to take enough seats from the DUP to ensure that it will no longer be the largest party at Stormont. That would leave Sinn Féin as the largest party, entitled to nominate the First Minister. The DUPs affection for devolution could not stomach such a scenario and the whole house of cards would collapse in the crisis thus created. We would be back to Direct Rule and power-sharing would be put on the back burner for a long time.
The MLAs do their best to put up a good show. Nevertheless, there are tensions behind the scenes over such issues as academic selection, the status of the Irish language and the vexatious issues of the timing of the transfer of justice and policing powers. There is a row about the boundaries of the proposed new local government districts, with rows about which council is to contain lucrative stores and factories in terms of the value of the rates which they yield. The proposal to replace the five Education and Library Boards with a single agency by the beginning of 2010 has now become unstuck, and the works of the Boards will be done by paid commissioners, without any democratic input at all, until the new agency is up and running. Don't hold your breath.
The DUP has also to contend with the promise by both Labour and the Tories to abolish dual or multi-mandates will be no longer able to hold down more than one elected positions, be it on a District Council, in the Assembly or at Stormont. Peter Robinson will have to choose between his job as a Member of Parliament or being First Minister at Stormont. A tricky choice:
You would never know what some of his MPs would get up to in the Mother of Parliaments without the Party leader to keep an eye on them? And how can you be First Minister in an Assembly of which you are not a member? None of this makes for stability.
Meanwhile, sinister figures await in the wings, as the activities of the dissidents remind us.
In evidence the court heard that an action had been taken by a local music fan against a firm of impresarios who had promoted a concert in the locality some time earlier. The plaintiff described how he had booked a ticket, but due to some administrative glitch, the floor staff had been unable to find him a seat. He was obliged to stand at the back for over an hour. After the interval he spotted an empty seat, but when he was asked to produce his ticket, he was informed that he was in the wrong section of the hall, as the seats were more expensive there. He was put back to the rear of the hall until the conclusion of the performance. "What you might call", said the presiding judge, "A long-standing fan."
Employees of Network Rail have been transported to a conference by coach, at a cost of £12 per head, the boss considering that rail travel was too expensive.
Irish passengers (and others) whose surname begins with O' are experiencing difficulties these days at US airports, as the computers no longer recognise the apostrophe in the names as given on passports, tickets, and other documentation. As the versions of the name do not match up, there is no end of confusion.
One of the biggest airports in the US is 'O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
There are less than 30 shoplifting days to Christmas. Ireland has recently achieved the dubious distinction of being top of the European league when it comes to shoplifting.
I blame all these swipe cards.
The Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas in the US (where else?) has demanded that its members be given priority for anti-Swine Flu injections. These portly gents are responding to recent reports that obesity puts them in a higher risk category.
A new American dictionary has introduced the word 'intexticated' to describe the condition of being distracted by text messages.
