Every
time a UK general election is held, the fact that
Northern Ireland is a failed political entity stares
one in the face, for at the end of the election
campaign, after the votes cast have been counted,
not a single north of Ireland voter will have made
a jot of difference as far as electing those who
will govern them for the next five years.
None
of the major UK political parties organise or stand
candidates in the north, thus, bar there being a
hung Westminster Parliament, the NI electorate are
all but disenfranchised, having absolutely no direct
democratic means to influence who is to govern them.
You
would have to look pretty hard to find another example
of a major Western Nation in which a section of
its people are excluded from directly electing their
national government. Even in the Basque region of
Northeastern Spain, which has similar constitutional
problems to the north in that a large part of its
population refuse to recognise the legitimacy of
the State that governs them, the two main Spanish
parties organise politically, plus, unlike in NI,
a local assembly exists.
The
situation the northern Irish electorate find themselves
in is truly a case of taxation without representation.
More surprisingly, bar the Irish Republican parties,
the Greens and one or two small outfits such as
SEA, all of the main political parties in NI, both
nationalist and unionist, accept almost without
question this nonsensical and anti-democratic situation
as it serves their best interest. Sadly the overwhelming
majority of the Unionist electorate (who in many
ways are the victims here), along with most of the
north's media, totally acquiesce with this crass
political gerrymandering.
One could understand this behaviour if Northern
Ireland had, as the Scots do, a Parliament of their
own, but they do not. Indeed when any local democratic
forum has been established in recent times, it has
been quickly shut down by the London government,
more often than not at the behest and with the support
of the majority of the north's politicians, which
in itself must be unique in the annuals of parliamentary
democracy. Indeed, if the unionist political leaders
were honest people, at the last assembly elections
they would have stood on a programme of 'vote for
us and we will disenfranchise you by demanding of
our masters across the sea that they shut down the
Assembly'.
In
reality what happens in the north of Ireland when
a UK parliamentary election is called is more on
a par with a Ruritanian Mockney State. For appearance's
sake, if they can be bothered, the two main UK Party
leaders will make a flying visit to the north for
the benefit of the TV cameras, in the full knowledge
their appearance will have no effect on the overall
result of the election, as Northern Ireland's 18
parliamentary seats will all be won by candidates
standing for local (NI) or all-Ireland political
parties. Indeed, on the day after the current General
Election had taken place, after the leader of the
opposition Michael Howard had long conceded defeat
and Tony Blair, having visited the Palace to receive
his new PMs credentials from Betty Windsor, was
in the process of making the names of his new Cabinet
public, not a single NI constituency had been declared.
A
side effect of this gerrymandering is that a majority
of the leaders of the north's political parties
have been in office way beyond their sell-by date
and treat their party as if it was their own thiefdom.
Unlike political leaders elsewhere, whose main ambition
is to lead their nation, most of NI’s leading
politicians' height of ambition is to control their
party and through it the political affairs of the
community which supports them, not by governing
them via a democratic forum, but by making deals
with the king across the water.
This
has changed somewhat now that SF has become the
main nationalist party, as its leader clearly has
quite legitimate ambitions to rule the island of
Ireland as a whole, which in reality would mean
ending the political partition of the island of
Ireland. As to the Unionist leaderships, they seem
quite content to play the big fish in a small pond
and display all the bigotry, prejudices and hatreds
which are inherent in provincial politics at its
worst. Another downside of this provincial mess,
which enables NI leaders such as Mr Paisley to remain
in office for decades, is few able lieutenants emerge
through the party ranks, for Caesar fears losing
his crown. What you get instead are able party bureaucrats
who are astute at carrying out their leaders' wishes,
but are not leaders in their own right.
Of
course, when the British first established Northern
Ireland the Ulster Unionists were an integral part
of the British Conservative Party; today this is
no longer the case. The fact that neither the British
Labour Party nor the Tories show any enthusiasm
to organise in the north highlights the fact that
the establishment in London does not see NI being
a part of the UK in the long term, nor, incidentally,
does the bureaucracy that runs the European Union.
By
the next UK general election, both of the main nationalist
parties in the north will have an all Ireland perspective;
SF always has and in all probability the SDLP will
have hitched up with Fianna Fail, and if PIRA has
been stood down, an electoral alliance between the
two might not be impossible in the north.
On
the Unionist side it is difficult to see how the
momentum for a single Unionist party can be stopped.
Having said this, come the next general election
the same problem of taxation without representation
will still exist. The only realistic way to overcome
it is for the island of Ireland to be reunited politically.
With Mr Paisley with his maker by the next general
election and Mr Adams about to retire to the Republic's
Presidency, perhaps this is not such an unrealistic
proposition, certainly no sillier than the present
arrangement.
