The Millennium Irritant.

Wednesday 27 September 2006

The constitutional position of Ulster within the United Kingdom – The solution.

Since 1974, every attempt to resolve the constitutional position of Ulster (it’s a more accurate and less cumbersome term than “Northern Ireland”) within the United Kingdom has relied on one form or another of legislated power sharing in a devolved assembly. Every such attempt has been a costly failure. The present experiment has failed twice in the last eight years and hopes are rightly dwindling for any sort of revival. Each failure has caused seismic shifts in the political landscape of Ulster and served to further isolate the electorate from the political life of the United Kingdom.

What has been the reaction of successive governments to each failure? “Ooops, devolution with legislated power-sharing has collapsed again – What shall we do? I know, let’s try devolution with legislated power-sharing.”

It is time to start shouting the message from the roof-tops. Due to its inherent lack of democratic accountability legislated power-sharing will never work in Ulster (or anywhere else in Europe for that matter).

This blindingly obvious fact appears to have eluded the comprehension of a succession of otherwise quite able prime ministers and secretaries of state. Unfortunately they have been ably assisted in putting their heads in the sand by a long succession of politicians from multifarious regional parties.

The present Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has impressed with his comprehension of the terrorist threat from Middle and Far Eastern groups and their home-grown supporters, is as far off-beam on Ulster matters as his predecessors while his well meaning but out-of-depth Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Wales, Peter Hain, is totally fixated on reviving the oft-collapsed power sharing circus.

While voluntary power sharing arrangements and coalitions do work from time to time, it is the kiss of death to try and give such arrangements legislative backing. The tired old arguments used in favour of legislated power sharing in Ulster is that of two “communities” needing to share power to ensure that each has its aspirations given parity of “esteem”. So every time a devolved assembly is elected legislated power sharing ensures that all of the major parties share government. Why do so many otherwise sane politicians fail to recognise the two principal reasons such arrangements never survive until a second election?

No single party or coalition of parties is accountable for the good or bad government of Ulster.
The electorate have no ultimate sanction of kicking out a failed devolved government at a subsequent election as they’ll all be back sharing power together again (if the whole arrangement manages to miraculously survive to a second election).

The present impasse arises out of parties in the Ulster Assembly having strong objections to sharing power with specific other parties. This is perfectly normal adversarial democratic politics. The argument for legislative power sharing is usually put as that of a “divided community” needing assurance that one part of the “community” can’t impose legislation on another.

Thankfully, there is a way of ensuring that this is the case in a devolved legislature without having to invoke unworkable legislated power sharing.

Elections would take place on single transferable vote for a 54 seat assembly (an interim arrangement could proceed with the present 108 member assembly but it’s far to unwieldy for the long term). Usually in Ulster this will give a “hung” result. It will then be up to the parties concerned to horse trade until a suitable coalition can command a 50% + 1seat majority in the assembly. (i.e: 28 seats). This coalition will agree a First Minister to lead the devolved government and the number of government departments and who will act as ministers for those departments.

All proposed legislation will first be classified into three Cross-Community Categories (CCC). These will be as follows:

Cross-community Category A.

Proposed legislation unlikely to have a significant differential of adverse or beneficial affects. between community groupings. Legislation in this category would require a simple 50% majority in the Assembly.

Cross-community Category B.

Proposed legislation likely to have some significant differential of adverse or beneficial affects. between community groupings. Legislation in this category would require a 55% majority in the Assembly.

Cross-community Category C.

Proposed legislation likely to have a marked significant differential of adverse or beneficial affects. between community groupings. Legislation in this category would require a 67% majority in the Assembly.

Thus, there would be no requirement forcing parties to share government with parties with which they have deep differences.

The CCC classification of proposed legislation will require a carefully devised formula to be applied. (I hope to propose such a formula in the near future.) Then, for most proposed legislation, a classification may be obtained using a well written computer programme.

Appeals may be made against these classifications if more than 25% of the whole assembly membership request this. In these circumstances a panel composed of five appointees considered to be skilled at weighing up arguments (i.e. from scientific or technological disciplines) would meet to consider the classifications. A 30 minute discussion “guillotine” would apply to each piece of proposed legislation to have its CCC Classification so reviewed. A simple 3-2 majority from this panel would suffice.

The above system has the advantage of being democratic, uncontroversial and inexpensive to the tax payer.

While there will no doubt be some tinkering needed around the edges, I see these proposals as the only way forward for the government of Ulster.