Lady in Red, Doctor Blue

And the winner is...Margaret Ritchie! Step forward, little lady - you done good. Well, you stopped Alastair McDonnell becoming leader and for that a lot of hearts are grateful (mainly in the SDLP). But will Ms Ritchie be any good as leader of the SDLP? All these things are relative. Standing beside John Hume, Mark Durkan looked awkward and callow; standing beside Alastair McDonnell, Margaret Ritchie looks petite and approachable. But then, standing beside Alastair McDonnell, a piles-plagued pit-bull might look petite and approachable.

For some politicians, nothing in their political life becomes them like the leaving it, but not so the disappointed Dr McDonnell. He had offered to radically reshape the SDLP, he said, but the party apparently wasn't ready for that yet. In other words, he wasn't made leader not because he wasn't good enough but because THE PARTY wasn't good enough...You have to admire such granite-hard self-belief, especially when it sits on such gossamer-thin evidence.

Abroad thoughts from home

Back in the 1970s in Canada, I remember talking to a Winnipeg broadcaster called Bill. He was known to everyone in Winnipeg and like all celebs, would be greeted in public places by people who didn't know him. Now it happened on one occasion that a total eclipse of the sun was best seen from Winnipeg, so US television stations linked to him talking about it and describing local reaction. Bill told me that he'd never received such response from local Canadians - they'd seen him on Canadian TV dozens of times but when the US channels featured him, Winnipegers fell over themselves to tell him "Saw you on TV, Bill!" He felt more than a bit uneasy about that, he said. What was it about Canadians, that they saw Canadians and Canadian work as meritworthy only when they had been endorsed by the big neighbour next door?

I thought of Bill's misgivings yesterday, when I had a piece on the transfer of policing and justice featured in the London Guardian's Comment Is Free section. I was pleased that it had appeared and that I had access to people who would normally not read me, and I let quite a few people know it was there. At the same time I had to remind myself that to see Britain as the only important court of validation is a sad and self-deficient view of life, and one that Irish people in particular have to struggle against. As George Bernard Shaw said a long time ago, the British look to the Irishman to play the fool and he often obliges.

Prescient or what?

And so the DUP have finally persuaded all their members to climb into the big four-poster bed called ‘Deal’. Or so we’re told. The clincher, informed sources tell me, was the saving of the Presbyterian Mutual Society savers. As it happens, I know a few Presbyterians with funds tied up in that society and more decent, agreeable people you couldn’t meet. So on a personal level I’m happy for them. However, two points bear mentioning. One, the PMS was in the mix for a deal weeks ago – months even. I know that from talking to people involved in PMS negotations with the British government and unionist politicians. So to attribute it, as RTE’s Tommie Gorman appeared to do this morning, to a last-minute clever move by Peter Robinson is to give it a false spin. The DUP have been working with PMS people for months now, knowing that it had real vote potential. And good luck to them. But if anyone was ever in doubt as to whether the DUP was a Protestant party for a Protestant people, that doubt came to an end last night.

Incidentally, I saw the revered Irish News’s chief political pundit on ‘Hearts and Minds’ last night. He agreed that a deal looked very likely. He didn’t mention that, some three weeks ago in his column, he made it abundantly clear that there would not, could not be a transfer of Policing and Justice powers before the Westminster election. Not sufficient will, he explained then, and not sufficient time. As I noted in an earlier blog, don’t believe what anyone tells you about what’s going to happen. Especially if they’re chief pundit for the revered Irish News.

Two little boys and the police

Is that light I see? Or the sun streaming through a hole in Peter Robinson’s head, put there by his ever-faithful MLAs? The temptation is to see the wearisome sight of the DUP dragging its wounded-animal carcass towards the finishing line as good news. (Note to self: we’ll have to get some fresh metaphors soon – the present ones stink of overuse.) But actually that’d be too optimistic. The only two worthwhile questions to ask are (i) Will the DUP ever become a truly power-sharing partner in office with Sinn Fein; and (ii) Will the brooding Jim Allister’s party eventually eclipse the DUP, as the DUP eclipsed the Ulster Unionists?

The answer to (i), I’m becoming more and more convinced, is No. Evidence, if evidence were needed, was supplied by Ian Óg Paisley this morning. He was debating with Lil Alex Attwood about the PSNI, as it is at present and as it should become. Lil Alex was saying how improved the figure for Catholics in the ranks was - 28% from less than 10% ten years ago - but that in the clerical staff ranks it was still only 11% Catholic, up from 8% ten years ago. Ian Óg was not impressed. The problem as he saw it was that over 2,000 Protestants had been deprived of the jobs that were rightly theirs in the PSNI because those jobs had been taken by Catholics.

I didn’t hear Ian Óg talking about the Parades Commission and the rights of Orangemen to troop their sectarian colours where they will, but after this morning I can see there’s no need for him to do so. There’s a perfect match-up between the problem with Orange parades – It’s the fenians’ fault, refusing to allow decent Protestants to walk the Queen’s Highway – and the problem of PSNI recruitment – It’s the fenians’ fault, refusing to allow decent Protestants to take their rightful place in ‘our police service’.

Mercifully, you have a choice in reacting to all this. You can feel depressed that we live in a state where the largest party (at present) hopes to thrive by slapping down the Orange card. Alternatively you can feel happy that the sectarian nature of that card and its use becomes clearer by the day.

As for whether Jim Allister’s TUV will ever eclipse the DUP: I don’t think so. Paisley’s smile was bad (remember those great stagtites of spittle that Ian Knox used to draw in his Irish News cartoons?) but Allister’s ghastly rictus is a grimace too far, surely, for the decent unionist people of this state.

All MLAs on deck!...Oh OK, 60% of you then.

It looks as if Peter Robinson has been restored, if not to rude health, at least to the leadership of the DUP. The announcement that he’s gone back to captaining what looks suspiciously like a political Titanic also made it clear he did so on the advice of his solicitor, Paul Maguire, who says he did nothing wrong. Mmmm. Why do we need to know the name of his solicitor? And when we know it, are we meant to draw any conclusions? Don’t ask me – I only live here. But I think the general public are pretty convinced he has some explaining to do, regardless of what Mr Maguire may opine. By the way – wasn’t Peter supposed to be looking after his wife in her ill-health? Maybe she’s better. Or someone else is looking after her.

Another mystery: how many, if any, DUP MLAs voted agin the settlement Peter Robinson brought to them t’other night? The BBC seems pretty adamant the number was fourteen, although they did their case little service by getting Tuesday and Monday mixed up, allowing wily DUPers like Sammy Wilson and Gregory Campbell to duck and weave as well as stonewall about whether the party was (hopelessly?) split.

The scariest part of the DUP story is how quickly bad stuff can happen – from hero party to zero party in a matter of days. At the turn of the year the DUP was big and brash and laughing hard at how it was stymieing Sinn Fein at every turn. Here we are at the start of February and the DUP are on the ropes, bleeding from more wounds than we once thought it had places. And Shaun Woodward isn’t doing much to staunch them. In the British House of Commons today, he pressed home the point that British patience isn’t endless, that offers of £800,000 ( I thought it was a billion? Cheesh) won’t be on the table forever, and that those who allow things to fall apart will be punished by the electorate. Now where have I heard that before? Ah yes - a few short weeks ago, Peter Robinson was telling us that if Sinn Fein walked away, they’d suffer the wrath of ‘the community’. The question sits up and begs for an answer: who’s suffering now?

Déja vu, Pierre?

This is Groundhog Day, and if you’ve seen the movie you’ll be tempted to draw parallels between Bill Murray’s repetition of the day until he got it perfect and the repetitions up at Stormont. Well, turn your back on temptation because the comparisons are false. The repetitions in the film had a valuable purpose – so the character played by Murray could see that a life which used others to aggrandize oneself was a life of no value. The repetitions up at Stormont are going in the opposite direction.

Gradually, from the murk and gloom of conflicting interpretations, a clear picture has emerged. Everyone- Sinn Fein, SDLP, Alliance, the two governments – all want Policing and Justice to be devolved NOW. The DUP, however, are still looking for ways to provide themselves with a parachute in case Jim Allister opens the aircraft door and tries to throw them out. Everything is being held up, repeated to the point where we all want to scream, not by a desire to get things right a la Bill Murray, but by a desire to get things rigged so the DUP can come out looking as though they’ve once more wiped Sinn Fein’s eye.

It’s a grim conclusion but one we’ll have to get used to, as we sit and drum our fingers: the DUP are incapable of respecting republicans/nationalists

A lull rather than a resolution?

With things political on the verge of a breakthrough, it’s probably churlish to be gloomy but I am. That’s because in my interview on BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Sunday Sequence’, I stressed the importance of respect between partners. It applies to any partnership, be it man and wife or a business partnership. If you have one party in the partnership continually grabbing opportunities to tell his /her friends about the latest occasion when they got one over on the other half, or how they hoodwinked other half into believing something which the fine print contradicted, hahahahaaaa, then you don’t have the foundations essential for a successful partnership. And if, after being subjected to this thinly-veiled contempt, the put-upon partner walks out, it’d be perverse to declare that the partnership failed because the put-upon one walked out.

Anyway, a few hours after my radio interview, I watched ‘The Politics Show’ on television. Featured were Sammy Wilson of the DUP alongside John O’Dowd of Sinn Fein. With a deal nearing completion between the two parties, what’s Sammy busy doing throughout the interview, down to his final words? He’s busy goading O’Dowd and Sinn Fein, annoucing that it’s good they’ve learnt not to try pushing the DUP around, that they now see threats don’t work, etc., etc. This, mark you, at a point when things have been resolved between the two. With that kind of attitude deeply imbedded in Sammy’s party, it’s hard to believe that the final rupture between the DUP and Sinn Fein has simply been postponed. When that unhappy day comes, I hope no bone-headed commentator comes on to apportion blame equally and to tell us ‘the two parties just couldn't agree’. Poppycock and horse's feathers. There's one party that has failed the agreement test and the respect test consistently, and looks set fair to go on failing: the DUP.

Thanks, Sammy. That's really cheered up my Monday morning.