Stakeholder

After this week, politics is better than poker! After three years as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown in the final moments of his premiership gave us a glimpse of the family man. People liked it but as with much of his stewardship it was too little, too late. It was very clear that Labour was only providing lip service to any concept of a pact with the Liberal Democrats.

The Tories on the other hand saw power slipping from the jaws of their victory and quickly threw the kitchen sink at the Lib-Dems in an attempt to woo them into Government. The unhelpful intervention of John Reid was disingenuous to his colleagues, as there is nothing more unedifying than the spectacle an ex politician clamouring for relevance.

Some parties here still seem to think that taking their political and mummified antecedents out of cold storage to bolster their images is useful but an ‘ex’ politician is just that.

While Gordon Brown gracefully accepted his defeat; the prospect of an early general election prompted an unusual level of loyalty from the DUP hierarchy for their embattled Leader. The DUP tactic of blaming the media for their ills is wearing thin but they had a fairly solid election result which will hopefully make them feel somewhat more secure.

Sir Reg decided to call it a day following the failure of the Tory Alliance to take root in Northern Ireland. The failure of the project can be laid more at the Tory door than the Ulster Unionists given Mr Patterson’s unhelpful decision to host not so secret talks between the DUP and UUP and Cameron’s unhelpful comparison between Northern Ireland’s over-bloated public sector and a former Soviet Bloc country. 

Northern Ireland is a strange place where the truth does not resonate well. Harold Wilson called striking loyalists workers ‘spongers’ in the 1970’s and he was right given the level of British subsidy to the NI economy. Then as now, Mr Cameron is right too about our public sector but the whining chorus of ‘hand- me- outs’ unified in their call against public sector cuts.

The fact that the Review of Public Administration and its recommendation to shrink our 26 local authorities is on freeze hold because a couple of local councils are squabbling the rates revenue from a few retail parks is obscene. This exercise of inertia has already cost millions.

Most of the councils in Northern Ireland are in debt and many intend worsening their situation by building wasteful follies. Sammy Wilson should call a halt to this nonsense and bring to an end the life of these councils by appointing a team of commissioners to run local authorities until agreement on new boundaries. At least this way there will be a degree of coordination on expenditure and local vanity projects can be reviewed on the basis on real need.

The level of waste in public expenditure at local government level cannot afford to wait until 2015 and Peter Robinson needs to square up to his Ministerial team and Executive colleagues to move things on.

Watching the TV debates between politicians it is clear than no party wants to bite the economic bullet. The Executive needs to show more collegiality and collective shouldering of responsibility; they are either in government together or out of government. It’s cheap to cry about the under-funding of a department when you know exactly how big the financial cake is before its cut.

Our all inclusive government makes many of the Assembly debates and committee structures redundant and wasteful. The so called ‘watching brief’ of Committee Chairmen lampooning their Ministerial counterparts because they are not of their own party is worthy of Barnum and Bailey. Ministerial question time is pure pantomime with members favourably stroking their own ministers with friendly questions while provoking the Ministers of other parties.

The appointment of the combative Alex Attwood as Minister of Social Development is unlikely to broker positive karma either around the Executive table or the floor of the Assembly.

Compare the body language of David Cameron and Nick Clegg over the past few days to the body language of our Leaders in their interactions. In policy terms the differences between Cameron and Clegg are seismic but in everything they are doing and saying they are demonstrating both leadership and hope.  No one expects miracles at Stormont but after 12 years of self government; the day of economic reckoning is here; its better we write the script than have it written for us.