Would we be any worse off if Stormont didn’t exist?

The scene at Stormont when all non-DUP MLAs left the chamber in protest, except for Claire Sugden and Jim Allister

Patrick Murphy.Irish News (Belfast). Saturday, December 24, 2016

Oh good, Stormont has survived another crisis. As thousands faced the bleak prospect of a Stormont-less Christmas, news came from on high that Sinn Féin’s threat of “grave consequences” for burning £400 million of our money, was not going to be so grave after all.

Indeed, there are not going to be any consequences, unless you think that proposing a Stormont motion next January constitutes a consequence. Even if it does, the threat boils down to holding an election. (Isn’t it an odd country where democracy is a threat?)

Oh dear, you say, what a terribly cynical attitude towards our politicians, especially at Christmas. Sadly, you do not have a point, because if cynicism did not exist, Stormont would invent it.

The main political parties argue that the solution to their involvement in perpetual scandal is to restore public confidence in Stormont. SF says we should even defend Stormont, although it is not clear from whom or what it should be defended.

So here’s a question for you tomorrow, as you settle down to watch the Queen on television: is Stormont worth defending, or is it now indefensible? Would we be better off (or at least, no worse off) without it?

(If you believe it is wrong to raise that question, you are an MLA. If you think the person posing it should be placed in a wood-pellet burner, you are a Spad and if you don’t understand the question, you are probably the Stormont Speaker.)

Of course, the parties refer to “the institutions”, rather than just Stormont. These include the North-South Ministerial Council, the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council. (It would certainly ruin Christmas if those three were to disappear.)

SF says that “the institutions” continue to deliver for people. However, it is hard to think of what those wonderful councils have delivered and many believe that Stormont’s delivery is more for politicians than for people.

But, says the party, the institutions “were hard fought for”, which suggests that the IRA fought for Stormont. (Since the British and the loyalists were also fighting for Stormont, why was there a war and why did it last for 30 years?)

So why should we defend (or have confidence in) what is not working? Why defend Stormont on Nama, Red Sky, Charter NI and £400 million going up in smoke? Why defend dodgy expenses, secretly appointed Spads, subsidized food and a Speaker who writes rather than speaks?

(In fairness, the Speaker faced a dilemma on Monday. He had to decide if Arlene was speaking as First Minister, or as some woman up for the day from Fermanagh, abusing her political opponents. Such decisions are a step up from a previous job as adviser to the UDA-linked Charter NI, where he presumably just had to advise them to say, “Can we have £2 million, please?” Stormont, in which he is the Speaker, would reply, “Yes, of course”, even though the UDA is illegal.)

The SDLP’s solution was a vote of no confidence in Arlene, when it should have proposed no confidence in the government, under collective coalition responsibility. That is what Sinn Féin would have done in the Dáil.

Sinn Féin opted to defend the establishment and is now doing a fine impression of Hillary Clinton. Arlene Foster knows that SF wants to avoid an election, particularly because of growing grassroots unrest over the party’s subservience to Unionism.

The party’s excuse was that it did not want to “collapse the institutions”, which just means dissolving the assembly and holding a new election. In the rest of the world, that is called democratic politics.

Arlene Foster’s defense against reasonable criticism was breathtaking arrogance, based on the knowledge that she is one of the world’s few parliamentary leaders who cannot be removed from office because she can directly defy the democratic result of a no-confidence vote.

So we certainly need an Assembly election but, more importantly, we need a new form of government, which punishes, rather than rewards, sectarianism, based on normal left/right politics.

If you think that would be too difficult, remember that this dysfunctional system of government is portrayed as a fitting political memorial to the almost 4,000 who were killed in sectarian violence here. Many families will see empty places at another Christmas table tomorrow and remember the dead of Kingsmills, Birmingham, Ballymurphy, Bloody Sunday and every other unnecessary bloody day.

How many believe that the deaths of their loved ones were worth what we saw in Stormont on Monday? You see, Stormont makes you cynical throughout the year. At Christmas, it just makes you sad.