A whole year of Stormont’s survival, but mixed reviews on the future
3 March 2025
Emma Little-Pengelly and Michelle O'Neill.
At the beginning of February, the latest resurrection of the North of Ireland's Stormont executive celebrated a year of existence and received mixed reviews.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill was the most optimistic and said;
“I only have to point to things like a strategy to end violence against women and girls, public sector pay being settled, the Good Jobs bill, a huge, vast array of legislation”….She hoped to publish the executive’s still largely fictional programme for government but even Michelle admitted to crisis in the health service.
The Irish News argued for an optimistic future;
“Both traditions, as well as the unaligned, can pursue their constitutional ambitions separately, but the opportunity to improve the lives of ordinary citizens on all sides is a priority within the grasp of our Stormont representatives.”Secretary of State Hilary Benn was a great deal more critical and set out three challenges facing the executive:
The reform and delivery of public services
Ensuring the smooth flow of goods across the UK
The need for sustainable, long term economic growth
Benn said that a lack of funding from the government “is not the impediment to public service transformation “The real impediment has been the failure to reform the system,” … there has “simply been a lack of agreement among executive ministers on the steps that need to be taken, or on the revenue that needs to be raised, or on the allocation of resources”
When questioned on revenue raising, Emily Little-Pengelly said there were a range of ways to fund these things, and
"I think we need to be really careful here because there is a thirst with some to simply say if government needs more money, then simply get the citizens of Northern Ireland to pay more money and that is not going to work."The views of the Secretary of State, the Irish News, the Sinn Fein First Minister and Little-Pengelly of the DUP have something in common and that is an agreement, in public at least, that Stormont needs to prove that it can make a difference to the economic situation in the North, going beyond its mere existence for one whole year. The reasons for the political decay of Stormont up to its collapse and non existence as a devolved government are not really analysed. It hasn’t gone away. The problem is the Good Friday Agreement itself.
If the problems of the North were only economic perhaps Nationalism and Unionism could come to an accommodation as they have in the councils, although it’s worth noting that these are all deals to share out public money to sectarian groups or to aid landlords and property developers
The economic problem now is that the British demand more local revenue. At the moment the two parties simply divide the British subvention. Sinn Féin are willing to at least make gestures in this direction of local income, but the DUP have a Trumpist position of defending big business - it was largely they who ran Lough Neagh down.
The political crisis remains. Unionism remains committed to sectarian dominance and the current settlement has been held up by a new policy entitled Safeguarding the Union (with Britain).
The Sinn Fein leadership want Stormont to work because they are now promoters of the never-ending peace process which they claim will deliver a border poll. Sinn Fein may say Stormont is temporary until Ireland is united but while it remains it’s an institution that upholds British and Unionist power.
For all the fractures, corruption and decay it is unlikely that Stormont will collapse in the medium term. The Irish government and the capitalist class are totally committed to the current form of partition and Sinn Féin are simply junior partners.
The revival of working-class politics that challenges British rule in the North and subordination to US and European capital in the South is the requirement for a new phase in the Irish struggle.