Crystal ball-gazing through political smoke and mirrors

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

The problem with the future is it hasn’t happened yet – and still we persist in taking out our precise scientific instruments, our high-powered computers, our algorithms and calculations and predict what’s going to happen later this year.

So what’s on the agenda for 2017? A general election? Putin invading the Baltics? China going broke? Civil war in Turkey? Marianne le Pen becoming President of France? Ruth Coppinger cracking a joke in the Dáil?

The only possible way to respond to that is to use the great catchall West Kerry expression, “Ni Fheadar”. Rough translated it means “I don’t know and I don’t really particularly care.”

Politics is often the playing pitch where the expected gives way to the bizarre – as we saw last year with Donald Trump and with Brexit.

Can we see more of it this year? Of course we can.

Everybody has been predicting a general election here but it may not happen. Nobody predicted an election in the north and that’s what we have been lumbered with. Only ten months after the last election.

The DUP and Sinn Féin have jointly ruled the roost for ten years but their support has arguably waned a bit.

The paradox is, if there has been a drop it will be halted, and perhaps even reversed in this election, despite both bearing responsibilities for the Assembly crashing to a halt.

The DUP is primarily responsible for the crisis because of its disastrous renewable heat incentive with its crazy grants.

The wanton waste of public money has caused ripples of anger across the North, even among its supporters, and has damaged the party.

On the other side of the coin, did Sinn Féin run home with the ball on too soft a pretext?

The DUP could have walked during the Jean McConville controversy or the sex abuse allegations that arose within republicanism but chose not to. Why did Sinn Féin not hold out for a public inquiry instead and why did make an issue of the (stricly unrelated) Irish language Léargas grant?

This crisis wasn’t about equality; it was about governance.

Both parties have powerful motivations. Many suspect that Sinn Féin saw straws in the wind (with the help of poll data) suggesting this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them to grasp the big prize and become the largest party in the North.

The knowledge that this will probably be Martin McGuinness’s last time leading the party into an Assembly election will be a powerful galvanising force.

For the DUP, the negative will be the imperative. Put us in to keep them out. It might not work and not alone might we see direct rule but also a unionist party being relegated into second place.

So much for Theresa May being a Remainer. She delivered a speech on Brexit this week that confirmed that Breixit will be as hard as granite.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.