Electorate don’t want to hear old same record

Viewpoint

DUP Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson with party colleagues. Credit: PA

May 14 2022 11:00 AM

It was all so sadly predictable. But just because something is expected doesn't lessen the impact when it arrives.

Five years ago it was Sinn Fein getting the flack for pulling down the Executive and crippling the government of Northern Ireland. This time it’s the DUP, now sitting on the side of the Assembly where Sinn Fein had sat prior to last week’s seismic election.

Swings and roundabouts, but far from fun and games.

And now the parties are, again predictably, lining up against the DUP stance.

For Alliance, leader Naomi Long is courting favour, calling for those who do not step up and nominate a speaker to allow MLAs to get to work to be the ones to have their pay cut.

For the SDLP, Matthew O’Toole said the DUP is no longer a party of democrats.

“They have subverted the clear will of people here and are once again pinning all their hopes on Boris Johnson coming to save them. They never learn.”

The DUP may have learned something, but the teachers were sitting opposite them in the chamber.

As for the DUP, hopes were boosted with the news that Mr Johnson is on his way on Monday, but Northern Ireland does not do compromise well. Trying to balance the needs and wants of every party is a difficult trick to pull off.

Success will take leaders actually working together, not standing apart.

We should have been at the genesis of a new Assembly. Instead our politicians need to spend the weekend understanding what ‘genesis’ means and possibly listening to Phil Collins sing the band’s 1986 hit Land of Confusion:

‘Too many men, there’s too many people, making too many problems and not much love to go ‘round. Can’t you see this is a land of confusion? Now this is the world we live in. And these are the hands we’re given. Use them and let’s start trying to make it a place worth living in,’ they will hear.

Northern Ireland does not need any more turning on, tuning in and dropping out.

Nor do the electorate want to hear the same old records, time after time.