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The contradictions of coalition – Stormont Parties feel the heat over draft budget

3 November 2007

John McAnulty

On Tuesday, 27 November Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said that the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP were 'problem parties' in the power-sharing executive. His comments followed SDLP and Ulster Unionist MLAs voting against part of the Draft Budget Proposals, while the parties’ ministers in the Executive refused support for the plan. The following day DUP Finance Minister Peter Robinson weighed in behind McGuinness: "We operate in a mandatory coalition, as a result of the (Good Friday) structures negotiated by the UUP and SDLP. The principle of coalition government is that there is collective decision making. Therefore the Programme for Government must be agreed by all parties as the basis for government. If all governing parties cannot agree the Programme for Government there will be no government."

So the latest row shows yet again the instability of the Stormont administration, with two parties in the government refusing to support the budget and the two major groups labelling them ‘problem parties’ and threatening to collapse the Stormont circus.

While there is an element of playacting and pantomime in the latest row, it is worthwhile dissecting out the mechanisms that ensure continued instability and the final collapse of the administration, at least in its present form.

There are three important mechanisms – all in contradiction to each other.  The formal mechanism, the informal reality, and the mechanism of sectarian rivalry.

The formal mechanism is the mandatory broad coalition around which the Stormont executive is based. The Good Friday agreement envisaged the parties shoehorned into government, with sectarian headcounts acting as an internal veto. From this perspective McGuinness and Robinson are right, and the other parties should repay ministerial seats with acceptance of collective responsibility.

The informal mechanism is summed up by the St. Andrews agreement.  It replaced the failed GFA and gave the DUP top dog status, bending the process closer to unionist majority rule.  In compensation for agreeing to this and offering unconditional support for the state, Sinn Fein were compensated by a series of secret deals that requires their acceptance of the details of government (the main elements have already been set in stone by the British).  This means that the programme is decided between the two parties on the basis of what the DUP will allow, with the SDLP and UUP in government, but frozen out of decision making.

UUP leader Reg Empey made this point in replying to his critics: "On the one hand DUP and Sinn Fein ministers want to be fireproofed and blameless on sensitive and contentious issues such as health cuts and water charges by insisting on unanimity, while on the other they are getting into a two-party cabal and deciding what they want and how to do it,"

But Empey’s criticisms are actually part of the third mechanism – intra-sectarian rivalry within the two sectarian camps.  Once sectarian logic takes over, the trend is towards one monolithic party that will represent most efficiently the sectarian interest of their base.  The smaller parties are in danger of being swallowed up, so the SDLP and the UUP must pose as a more radical opposition, either by being more sectarian or more populist, in the hope that they can erode the base of the bigger parties. At the same time they must try to hold their places in government to distribute the patronage that is the lifeblood of a bourgeois party and hopefully demonstrate their fitness for a future government by their skills as ministers.

In the current case we have a budget designed by the British that represents an all-out attack on the working class. In as far as it has been modified by the DUP and Sinn Fein, it has been shifted further to the right to make more concessions to business and drain more money from public service.  The outcome is going to be highly unpopular, and depends a great deal on sharing the blame equally between all the parties and in convincing workers, in the words of  Thatcher, that there is no alternative.  Any hint that Sinn Fein and the DUP are solely responsible for the cuts could see their vote erode sharply in favour of the rival parties. On the other hand failure to convince voters that they are in opposition to the cuts could see the SDLP and UUP discarded on the grounds that they are unable to offer any opposition. The outcome is the ultra-right sectarian, the UUP’s Chris McGimpsey, promising to mobilise rank and file health workers against the cuts!

This division is endemic, and will arise time and time again even if the parties are aware of the need to compromise and know that the collapse of the assembly would be a disaster for them.  What makes the conflict especially ironic is the lack of any real difference between the parties on the budget. All are convinced of the need for a far-right economic agenda.  They can’t afford to acknowledge that agreement.  An equal irony is the popular support for the assembly.  The majority of workers, egged on by the trade union bureaucracy, are convinced that a local assembly will look after their interests.  It will not be long before their mistake is drawn sharply to their attention through a series of job cuts, wage freezes and cuts in public services, while at the same time they will see semi-privatised quangos spend as if there were no tomorrow. 

Ominously for Sinn Fein, political commentators are beginning to suggest the obvious way out of the built-in governmental instability. A mandatory coalition of all the parties can be replaced by a voluntary coalition – in other words a return to the bigoted majority rule government of the past, in circumstances where it would implode even more quickly. The gradual decay of the party, evidenced by the resignation of the Fermanagh/South Tyrone MLA Gerry McHugh, will further weaken their position.  All capitalist governments, when applying austerity, require a heatshield – a party to take the blame and the punishment when the workers hit back.  As the classroom dispute indicates, Sinn Fein are perfectly placed to take that role.
 

 


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