“Opposition” – another example of Simplistic Progressives?

I have written before about the risks associated with people offering a solution without properly examining the problem. I have hinted also that this “Progressive” Third Pillar can be just as guilty of it as anyone else. Talk of an NI flag was one example; but talk of “Opposition” is perhaps another one.

No one really doubts, instinctively, that “Opposition” at Stormont is a good idea in principle.

Even that, however, does need to be fully examined – Switzerland recently scored highest for public trust in political institutions, and Switzerland doesn’t have an Opposition in its Federal Parliament. The reasons are not dissimilar to Northern Ireland’s – a structure had to be found to ensure all the competing linguistic, religious and regional interests of an incredibly complex Confederation would be fairly represented in government. Is there not a case for saying Northern Ireland is a bit like Switzerland?

In any case, is Opposition so great? Was it not the ding-dong of Republican versus Democrat “Opposition” which caused the entire US Government to close down in October? Was it not the requirement to find a majoritarian government and opposition which left Belgium (a country of similar complexity to Switzerland and Northern Ireland) without a functioning Government of any sort for a year and a half at the end of the last decade? Are we seriously to believe that one or other of George Osborne or Ed Balls has all the right answers for the economy and the other all the wrong ones? Politics doesn’t need to lack an Opposition to become utterly ludicrous!

Even if you accept the principle, you have to come up with a proposal which takes into account Northern Ireland’s complexity. If you have power-sharing government, you need power-sharing opposition. Achieving power-sharing government is complex (even requiring a complex mathematical formula and a highly dubious “designation” system); so how precisely are we to achieve power-sharing opposition as well?! What happens, for example, if one designation votes overwhelmingly for a single party, and the other’s vote is split almost evenly between two – how do you get your “power-sharing opposition” out of that? It’s not at all straightforward.

Even if a system is found to achieve that (and Alliance’s for a weighted majority is far and away the most sensible), you have to take account of the sensibilities of the past, whether you like it or not – as they continue to protrude, understandably, into our culture in the present. Northern Ireland has never had a “Loyal Opposition” (only one which was inherently disloyal); Nationalists understandably would be highly wary of any system which threatened to leave them without a fair share of power at the Executive table. How do you resolve that? I would not know even where to begin.

Most of all, “Opposition” is presented as a solution to a problem, which isn’t actually the problem – and indeed may even cause a bigger problem.

The problem is that the voters, again for understandable (if highly frustrating) historical and cultural reasons, keep choosing to elect people as communal negotiators, not as legislators. Put more bluntly, the DUP has to be in government given its mandate (it could over-ride any reasonable “qualified majority” and is the largest party in the largest designation); and, more to the point, Sinn Fein has to be in government given its essential role in “soft power” keeping “Dissidents” from mounting a full scale campaign.

So here’s the challenge – less of the simplistic tweets about how we “obviously” need an Opposition. Let us have a full explanation of:

– why precisely an “Opposition” automatically leads to better politics (when a prosperous and peaceful multicultural, multi-linguistic society like Switzerland demonstrates the contrary);

– how precisely a power-sharing Opposition could be formed alongside a power-sharing Executive (regardless of electoral outcome);

– how precisely negotiations with Nationalists would be started to ensure their historical and cultural concerns of potential under-representation from positions of power would be fairly covered; and

– how precisely the transition to a system which may see Sinn Fein in opposition would be managed given the security threat obviously raised by that.

I have attempted to answer the first two of these, but I have no idea how to go about the third and fourth.

So, over to the the determined advocates… enough of the simplistic talk about the theory, let’s hear some detail about the practice.

Good luck…