Stakeholder

Politicians can make me cringe when they are obviously trying to avoid an interviewer’s question. Sometimes you can’t fault them as political interviews have descended into light entertainment whereby the interviewer feels obliged to arouse their audiences by becoming the interviewee’s sparring partner. Thus we are now regularly treated to the highly subjective interviewing styles of the bombastic, Vincent Browne and the pantomime antics of Stephen Nolan. These media bear pits are much loved by a baying public of gurners, grumblers and grunters; whose antecedents no doubt once enjoyed gladiatorial bouts of entertainment like the feeding Christians to lions. Politicians can easily falter and fall in such jousts. A momentary lapse on TV and words can become hurdles that are captured on celluloid forever.

This week TV gave us the opportunity to watch the race that may never be: i.e. the preliminary nominations for the post of Justice Minister in Northern Ireland. In what seems like a remarkable own goal, only the SDLP stepped up to the mark. The Party nominated Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie. On line commentators on blogging sites like Slugger O’Toole appeared surprise too; suggesting the Minister is already in a full time job and is actively seeking another as SDLP Leader and therefore does not need the distraction of game playing for a third.

Mainstream political commentators were also incredulous about the move.

In fairness to Margaret Ritchie, her supporters say she is conscious and sensitive to the issue of double jobbing and apparently in a public meeting gave a commitment to review, the issue, if successful for the SDLP leadership. Others within the organisation think that the issue of double jobbing is irrelevant and the SDLP involvement in Westminster is tactical rather than territorial.

Nevertheless with the Minister busy at her Department and while she is a credible candidate for any post within the Executive or the SDLP, one would have thought there was a political imperative for the SDLP to spread the load and promote internal talent.

Sources close to the decision to nominate Margaret Ritchie within the SDLP have been at pains to say they had no choice but to nominate and had they not; they would stand accused of not being serious about their entitlement to another Ministry.

So if you follow the logic this is a tactical move.

BBC commentators, like many within the SDLP, expressed surprise that, if they had to nominate (and that’s not an unanimous thought) that the choice was not the SDLP European standard bearer and barrister, Alan Maginness, who on current form at least, has the largest mandate from SDLP supporters and is an credible, competent, cross community candidate for the Justice post. By nominating their sole Minister, the SDLP risks undermining her credibility – when defeated, while also allowing Sinn Fein to escape their responsibilities. Sinn Fein quickly said they would support Ritchie, knowing the Minister will fail to achieve cross community support, allowing them to say at least they tried.

Of course, the SDLP could have nominated anyone. Mary Bradley could be the party nominee for Justice, if she had leadership support; just in the same way, Willie Mc Crea could be Justice Minister, if he could attract cross community support in the Assembly! While both are possible; neither is probable.

As with everything the SDLP seems to do these days; political strategy is over-thought, and overly complicated. This tactic was lost on the public. It reminded me of a Donald Rumsfeld who said: “Reports that say something has happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don’t know we don’t know”. . Now think about it-from what other well known Northern Ireland politician could such an explanation emanate and expect to be understood?

In the movie Carry on Cruising there is a funny plot where the staff on the ship decided to mark the Captain’s ten year tenure by coming up with the clever idea of baking him a cake using ingredients from his world travels. The end result looked fantastic but then Captains face contorted as his taste buds reacted to the various international ingredients of chow mein, spaghetti, curry and mustard all in one dish!

The SDLP should keep it simple, straight-forward and digestible; after all its only politics -not Master Chef.